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The Suffering of Chen Guangchen – his exit to the U.S. and the challenge he poses to China, the USA and the UK

Posted by David Alton on

The world’s attention has recently been focused on the plight of Chen Guangcheng, the blind civil and human rights activist. Chen was jailed for four years after challenging China’s one child policy.
After his release Chen was put under house arrest. Then, in unwitting imitation of The Shawshank Redemption, last month Chen scaled a wall, took to his heels and – after a drenching in a river and numerous wrong turns – navigated himself to where, He Peirong, a well known blogger, was waiting for him. She drove him for eight hours to Beijing and has since been arrested.

In the capital Chen sought sanctuary in the US Embassy, who then brokered a deal with the Chinese and delivered Chen to a hospital unit. A series of dramatic twists and turn finally ended with the welcome news that Chen has been allowed to leave China and fly to the Unites States. Meanwhile, the corrupt and violent officials in Linyi, where Chen was tortured an imprisoned, have been tightening the noose around his extended family.

Indicative of Chen’s widespread following, China have obliterated references to Chen and even censored the word Shawshank from internet searches. Young Chinese have taken to wearing dark glasses – emblematic of Chen – and bloggers have been breaking firewalls to tell Chen’s story.
Chen’s case had grabbed China’s imagination posing a real problem for its Government and those of the US and the UK too.

In an editorial The Economist, underlined the ramifications of what Chen has done: “ At rare moments the future of a nation, even one teeming with 1.3 billion souls, can be bound up in the fate of a single person” Chen “matters enormously to China’s future.”

Chen is not a political dissident and does not denounce the country or its leadership. He is a true patriot, in tune with the masses, and dangerous because he has won the people’s respect and their hearts. One day Chen Guangchen will be celebrated in China as a national hero.

Chen’s fate challenges China’s attitude towards human dignity but he challenges the US, too.
If it had emerged that the Americans had removed Chen from safety, failing to secure safe passage for him and his family, it would have cast serious doubts on American diplomacy. The US would have been humiliated and it would have signalled a troubling shift in super power relations.

Chen’s case reminded me of the Siberian Seven – seven Christians who for five years, from June 1978 until June 1983, took refuge in Moscow’s American Embassy. Their story began in 1917 at the time of the Russian Revolution when they were exiled to Siberia. For decades they suffered persecution and violence and were branded traitors.

In 1983 President Reagan and Vice President George Bush Snr. got them out of their 5 foot by 18 foot embassy sanctuary. Visas were secured and they settled in the USA.

In 1981 I had become involved with the case. It led to the formation of the Jubilee Campaign. Their story gave global attention to the crushing of religious liberties in the Soviet Union and became a wake-up call to the world.

Chen’s story – and the stand he has taken against coercive population policies – will act as a similar catalyst, shining the spotlight on an inhumane policy which many in China have begun to question.

Hillary Clinton, and Barrack Obama, will not find it easy to bask in the reflection of Chen’s courage – both have been supporters of the reproductive rights lobby and of population control. In 1995, Mrs.Clinton participated in the Beijing Women’s Conference – a notorious conference of political elites, marked by the absence of a single Chinese woman who had suffered under the one-child policy – a policy not even alluded to during its deliberations.

Women’s rights, human dignity and family freedom is, of course, what Chen’s case is all about.

And here is the rub for the UK, which has aided and abetted the very policies which led to Chen’s incarceration after he exposed the 130,000 forced abortions in Shandong Province.

Over three decades British aid has been diverted into coercive population policies. Money given to UNFPA and IPPF has been channelled to the Chinese Population Association. They implement China’s one child policy – a policy which makes it a criminal offence to be pregnant; a policy which makes it illegal to have a brother or a sister. On one memorable occasion, after challenging this obscenity, a British Cabinet Minister swore at me and showed me the door.

This policy, which Chen challenged, and received rather more than verbal abuse, has led to an estimated 400 million babies being aborted or killed through infanticide; a gendercide policy which favours the birth of male children so that one out of every six girls is aborted or abandoned – leading to some 40 million “missing” women. It has skewed the population balance with around 120 male babies for every 100 girls.

The policy has also distorted the balance between young and elderly people with catastrophic social repercussions. Sex trafficking and crime has proliferated; women have become commodities; trafficking leads to the sale of girls as child brides. Little wonder that 500 despairing Chinese women take their own lives every single day.

China is a huge country and it would be wrong to assume that the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, or senior officials, approve of the barbarism of regional Communist Party officials.

Chinese people are some of the most cultivated people in the world, and there is much about today’s China which fills me with deep admiration, but the treatment of Chen and his wife and the behaviour of its provincial officials underlines the continuing challenge of matching extraordinary economic progress with the enhancement and protection of human rights. We have not heard the last of Chen Guangchen and can thank God that he now has the freedom to speak for millions without a voice.

By courageously exposing egregious violations, coercion, and eugenics this remarkable Shawshank has caught the public imagination. What an irony that it has taken a man with no sight to see that to which we have shamefully closed our eyes.

Two Papers Given To The All Party Parliamentary Group On North Korea on May 16th 2012 by Mr.Mark Fitzpatrick of IISS and Mrs. Park Sun-Young

Posted by David Alton on

What follows are the two papers delivered on May 16th to the All Party Parliamentary Group on North Korea.

 

The contributing speakers were Mrs.Park Sun-Young, a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea, who spoke about security and human rights issues and Mr.Mark Fitzpatrick, Director of the non-Proliferation and Disarmament Programme of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and who addressed the issue of North Korea’s nuclear programme and other security questions. Lord Alton is Chairman of the Parliamentary Group.

 

North Korean Security Challenges  – Post Kim Jong-il

16 May 2012, All-Party Group on North Korea

Mark Fitzpatrick, International Institute for Strategic Studies

I wish to thank Lord Alton for this opportunity to meet with the All Party Group on North Korea

 

Last year when IISS wrote a dossier on North Korean Security Challenges, we were pessimistic about the security situation on the Korean Peninsula.  We discussed a broad spectrum of security challenges posed by North Korea:  wide-ranging in geographic impact and multifaceted in nature.

The immediate security challenges posed by North Korea are formidable.  These include nearly the full array of weapons of mass destruction:

  • a plutonium-based nuclear weapons program now supplemented by uranium enrichment;
  • the world’s third largest chemical weapons arsenal, possibly biological weapons and
  • a range of ballistic missiles that may be able to deliver these weapons to South Korea and Japan, if not today, then later, after more development and testing.

 

North Korea’s most direct threats are to its immediate neighbours, firstly, of course, to the ROK, by manner of conventional and asymmetric capabilities, including nuclear, CW, possibly BW, ballistic missiles, long-range artillery, special operations forces, and cyber warfare.   North Korea remains the most militarised country on earth, with the world’s fourth largest army and biggest special forces.   The threat is enhanced, and real, by virtue of North Korea’s propensity to initiate hostility as it did twice in 2010.  In the cyber domain, it is on-going, including interference with GPS systems of planes using Seoul’s busy airports.   Although its economic decline and enhanced capabilities in South Korea make any option to invade seem less credible today than in the past, the North has many ways to inflict harm without invading.

China is not directly threatened, but is deeply concerned about any eventually that could cause a refugee flow and tension in one of its sensitive border areas.   North Korea’s human rights violations, inability to feed its people, and inherent systematic flaws could lead to implosion that produces China’s nightmare scenario, however much Chinese deny that such a thing could happen.

All countries, whether in Asia or Europe or elsewhere face a threat from North Korea’s drug trafficking, currency counterfeiting, money laundering, endangered species trafficking, smuggling of counterfeit cigarettes and pharmaceuticals, insurance fraud and other forms of state crime, not to mention the still unsettled crimes of abductions.

Countries around the world are also threatened by North Korea’s willingness to transfer nuclear and missile technologies to any would-be buyer, including, possibly to terrorist groups, as threatened twice by North Korean negotiators.    The evidence is clear that in the past ten years, North Korea provided assistance to both Libya and Syria in efforts to develop nuclear weapons programs. There is also some evidence, albeit unconfirmed, that North Korea may also have been engaged in nuclear cooperation with Iran and Myanmar.  Among these countries, Libya is no longer a customer.  The Assad regime in Syria may also be on the way out.   And Myanmar appears to be coming in from the cold.  This leaves Iran as North Korea’s only reliable partner, but a very important one.

Some observers have alleged that the extensive cooperation between North Korea and Iran in the missile field also extends to their nuclear programs.  Such cooperation would seem to have a compelling logic: North Korea has weapons-related technology in both plutonium reprocessing and uranium enrichment and building, and testing nuclear explosive devices, while Iran has the money and oil that North Korea needs.  However, allegations of Iranian–North Korean nuclear cooperation have not been substantiated.

 

The IISS dossier saw no evidence that North Korea might trade away its nuclear arsenal for any diplomatic or economic gain.  Rather, Pyongyang now speaks in terms of the US dealing with the DPRK as an equal nuclear state, even stating hopes of concluding a deal in the same way that the US did with India.  Pyongyang now says that it is ‘unimaginable’ to expect it to return to the NPT as a ‘non-nuclear state’. It has also said that it will only feel no need to retain its nuclear weapons once the American ‘nuclear threat is removed and South Korea is cleared of its nuclear umbrella’. The first of these conditions is highly subjective and the second is very unlikely, as it would require the end of the US–South Korea alliance. It thus appears that Pyongyang perceives its nuclear weapons as a permanent feature.   These themes were repeated by North Korean participants at an IISS seminar in late March.

 

Dynastic succession

In our dossier we argued that the dynastic succession that was beginning to unfold in Pyongyang and the uncertainties this entails exacerbate the potential for conflict. We said the designated successor will face severe disadvantages because of his lack of experience, his fragile power base, the political constraints on economic reform and the military’s role in politics.  In almost all respects, the external and internal conditions are less favourable for this second generation succession than for the first dynastic transfer after the death of regime founder Kim Il-sung in 1994.

 

This could make North Korea an even more dangerous nation, more inclined to engage in further military provocations, to cling to its weapons of mass destruction and to offer them for sale to any would-be buyer. In pursuit of the goal of becoming a ‘strong and prosperous great nation’ by this year, such military capabilities are all that the regime can summon.

 

We also predicted that the death of Kim Jong-il will be a Moment of Truth and that he probably was in the last decade of his life.  Well, that turned out to be true.  We said : “ If Kim Jong-il dies in the next few years, there is no guarantee that without paternal protection his son will be successful in taking over, or even that the North Korean elite and system will hold together.”  So far, so good, from Kim Jong-un’s point of view.  Not that we predicted collapse; but we said collapse and ensuing Korean unification was a more distinct possibility.

 

It is too early to judge the succession a success. The fundamental crises that could cause a tipping point remain acute.  North Korea’s moribund economy remains beset by contradictions.  The leadership is fearful of introducing the market reforms that are necessary to escape their poverty trap.  The nation is unable to feed its people, and is falling further behind all its neighbours every year.  Moreover, the population increasingly realizes this, through various channels to the outside.

 

Leap Day Deal

 

On the foreign policy front, Kim Jong-un began his tenure with a massive miscalculation compounded by a humiliating technical failure.  First there was a Leap Day agreement that appeared to auger well for the new leader’s foreign policy vision.  Pyongyang agreed to a moratorium on nuclear tests and long-range missile launches and uranium enrichment activities at Yongbyon, with monitoring by the IAEA.  In exchange, the US agreed to provide 240,000 tonnes of nutritional assistance, delivered over the course of 12 months.

 

The nuclear moratorium was incomplete in that North Korea did not undertake to stop work at other enrichment facilities outside Yongbyon.  At least two such undeclared facilities must exist.  There is suspicion that North Korea has produced highly enriched uranium at a secret site.  Yet in other ways the agreement was too good to be true: 240,000 tonnes of food aid, worth about $200m, which the US might normally provide under humanitarian grounds in any case in exchange for a freeze of activities in both the nuclear and missile areas that provoked so much concern.

 

We did not predict North Korea would be willing to make such a deal.  I am on record as saying after the death that Kim Jong-un would not be able to say no to veteran military officials who would want to conduct additional tests of both their nuclear devices and of missile systems.  The military officers would want to ensure that strategic weapons reliably work.  The last two nuclear tests were significantly smaller than the first tests of other nuclear states, which probably means they were a fizzle.

 

North Korea’s tests of medium-range missiles were also only partially successful, and it has two or more intermediate-range missile systems that it hasn’t tested at all:  the Musudan and Nodong variants that were that was paraded in October 2010 and the prototype missile displayed in the 15 April parade.

 

So why did North Korea agree to a moratorium on further nuclear tests and long-range missile tests?   When speaking at a seminar in London on Marcy 15, I said one answer may lie in the definition of “long-range missile launches.”  I predicted trouble over this issue because North Korea does not consider space-launch rockets to be missiles. This was the case in April 2009, when North Korea launched the Unha-2, which was a slap in the face to the new Obama administration.

 

Space launches differ from ballistic-missile tests in their purpose and trajectory. But because satellite-launch rockets and ballistic missiles share the same bodies, engines, launch sites and other development processes, they are intricately linked. The satellite launch also provides missile-development information regarding propulsion, guidance and operational aspects. When I predicted trouble last Thursday, I didn’t it to happen so quickly.  I thought at least North Korea would wait until after it received the 240,000 tons of nutritional assistance from the US.   It was more honest that North Korea broke the deal before it received any of the aid.

 

Although the agreed language of the Leap Day Deal was ambiguous in saying only that the moratorium covered long-range missile launches, the United States “made clear unequivocally that they considered that any satellite launch would be a deal-breaker.

 

 

 

It is puzzling why North Korea carried out the space launch despite the obvious incongruity with the Leap Day deal.  The answer seemed to be that Kim Jong-il had given the go-ahead for a launch before he died.  In any weighing of policy priorities the nation’s ‘military first’ policy ensures that generals have the upper hand.

 

The greater mystery is why North Korea agreed to a deal to suspend long range missile launches, knowing one would soon take place is.  If Kim Jong-un believed he could have both the deal and the launch because Obama would forgive the deceit, he was badly advised. And with the break-up of the rocket he got neither, demonstrating both inexperience and ineptitude.

 

It is easy to see events now playing out as they did three years ago, with a further escalation.  In early April, satellite photos showed growing piles of dirt next to a previously used nuclear test shaft and the South Korean media speculated that North Korea was preparing to test a bomb using highly enriched uranium.  The humiliation of the failed space launch seemingly added to the reasons for a third nuclear test: to it would be some means of demonstrating power.  As of today, however, no test has taken place and there has been no further observable work at the test site for about a month.

 

Ending on a slightly optimistic note, it may just be possible that China’s diplomatic pressure may have helped dissuade North Korea from taking the further step of testing another nuclear weapon.  Maybe it’s too much to ask for, but is it possible that Kim Jong-up has learned from his previous mistake?

————————————————————————————————————————————————–

 

Park Sun Young Speech- May 16th>

 

The Honourable Chair of this meeting, David Alton, and Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Mark Fitzpatrick who have spared no efforts in organizing today’s meaningful seminar, and all our friends who have convened here, I am very glad to meet with all of you.

 

My name is Sun-Young Park, an assemblywoman in Liberty Forward Party of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea.

 

 

1. An abrupt death of Kim Jong-Il and the power succession

 

 

Since the abrupt death of Kim Jong-Il, the North Korean leader, on December 17th, 2011, the world has begun to focus on how it would affect the North Korean power structure and security in Northeast Asia.

 

His death was certainly one of the most significant issues to take place on the Korean peninsula last year.

 

It was a historical issue because the dictator had ruled North Korea with an iron fist for more than 37 years which is quite unprecedented in modern history.

 

His death attracted global attention even more because the Jasmine revolution, was sweeping through the Middle East at the time. It was spreading from Tunisia to other countries such as Algeria, Jordan, Yemen, Sudan, and eventually resulting in the ouster of Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, the dictator of 42 years in Libya.

 

From the perspective of its southern neighbor and the country which is still technically at war with North Korea, the death of Kim Jong-Il has been a critical issue in South Korea.

 

It was a matter of great interest whether it would turn out to be a stepping stone for reunification on the Korean peninsula or it would lead to another military clash due to the power struggle in the North.

 

At the same time, his death and its aftermath pose one of the most daunting challenges to the international community and Northeast Asian nations.

It is more so because Russia, the US, China and South Korea are facing a presidential election.

 

Therefore, neighboring countries of North Korea are keeping their eyes on the Korean peninsula after Kim Jong-Il’s death.

 

Suffering from a long illness, he was able to officially nominate Kim Jung-un, his third son, as his successor at North Korea’s  Labor Party representatives meeting in September, 2010, one year before his death.

 

Then, concerned about his young successor, he prepared a double-protection structure. In order to hold the military, which has grown extremely powerful under the military-first policy, in check he completely restructured the North Korean Labor Party to restore some authorities back to the party.

 

At the same time, in order to check Jang Sung-Taek, who is a faithful guardian, but who has a highly concentrated power, Kim Jong-Il strategically positioned his loyal officials,  Lee Young-Ho, Kim Jung-Gak, Kim Won-Hong, Woo Dong-Chun, Kim Young-Chun, Kim Ki-Nam, Choi Hae-Ryong, Joo Kyu-Chang,

and Choi Tae-Bok, within the military and the party.

 

Under such a double-protection structure,  Kim Jung-un rapidly took control of the military and the intelligence agency. And when Kim Jong-Il died, he rose to power as planned.

 

As the young and inexperienced leader has recently taken the top post of military, the chief of Korean People’s Army, he has become the leader of the party, the military, and the state.

 

Kim Jung-un, out of necessity, continues to treat the military with respect. But, he seems to be implementing strategic measures to fundamentally change the power structure so the military could be controlled through the party as his father had envisioned for him.

 

After death of Kim Jong-Il, the list of a national funeral committee showed us that some military figures ranked high not because of their military posts, but because of their party posts, which analysts say is more evidence that Kim Jung-un is trying to alter the balance between the party and the military.

 

Some South Korean officials were concerned that any internal power struggle could lead to discord or turmoil in the ruling class  but it does not appear to be happening, at least so far.

 

Surely, the North Korean authorities had tried to prevent the social unrest during the process of power succession by issuing a terrifying decree.

 

It stated that anyone who was caught during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong-IL would be considered as traitors and his family members of three generations would be executed.

 

Consequently, for now, the Kim Jung-un regime is believed to have stabilized safely.

 

In other words, Kim Jung-un, the third generation of the Kim family, seems to have succeeded in solidifying his power by emphasizing the greatness and divineness of the family.

 

It was possible due to its unique isolation and a tight control over its people.

 

Each evening, every citizen is required to attend a meeting which forces them to criticize themselves under the pretext of learning. They also have to keep a close eye on each other five households grouped into a unit. If one shows any strange sign, they are placed in what is called “correctional facility” or a labour camp and suffer horrible punishment.

 

However, North Korea is showing signs of change, different from its past.

 

As the rationing system and public education started to collapse in the late 1990s, North Koreans began to learn capitalism at the market.

 

In particular, people who conducts business across the borders with China or who have their family members or relatives defected from North Korea, are emerging as a big hand in the market. Now, they have come to possess their own cell phones.

 

Through that, information began to flow into North Korea which had been a perfectly isolated community.

 

 

To strengthen this phenomenon, South Korean politicians, North Korean defectors, and NGOs have provided radios and flown balloons with leaflets containing various information on them.

 

Thanks to their efforts, North Koreans were able to shift their eyes and ears toward the outside world. A growing influx of information from the outside will eventually help bring a transition to a society.

 

That encouraged people to defect from their nation more than ever. North Korea, stunned at this sudden turnabout, began to carry out executions at public places instead of political prisoner camps.

Against this backdrop, North Korean human rights issue began to rise around the world.

 

 

2. the Transition of North Korea from “a Gigantic Prison” and the Changes with China

 

In a nutshell, we can say that North Korea itself is a huge prison.

 

I think that such a condition that created numerous North Korean defectors despite its heinous decrees.

 

More over, their defecting style has changed from the past. In the past most of them defected alone due to hunger.

 

But now they defect in a family unit to improve the quality of their lives. North Korea began to be embarrassed of this change and as a result, they ended up issuing such terrible decrees. In spite of those efforts, it brought about many more defectors. They exposed the dismal conditions and the inhumane treatments they experienced during the escape from North Korea and the repatriation from China. The severe violations of human rights have prompted controversies in the international community.

 

In this situation China is faced with a dilemma.

 

At first China tried to help the North Korean authorities, hoping its power succession goes well. However, it seems to have shifted its position toward North Korea facing pressure from the international community.

 

It cannot stand by North Korea blindly as it has in the past.

 

China maintained a silence when the UN Resolution on the Situation of Human Rights in the DPRK was adopted in the UN Human Rights Council in May. It demanded neither opponent discussion or a vote at the meeting. It was surprising!

 

In addition, when the Chinese president, Hu Jin-tao visited Sout Korea in late March, he publicly criticized saying that North Korea should take a responsibility for its people. Such a strong remark was not seen  before.

 

And then, it sent some defectors, who had been detained in the Korean embassy, along with the families of prisoners of war to South Korea.

 

The decision was made quickly.

 

Once China’s attitude seemed to have changed, North Korea pulled out the nuclear card again.

 

 

 

3. the Kim Jung-un Regime and Nuclear Capability

 

Nuclear capability meant everything for North Korea even  during the regimes of its founder Kim Il-Seung and his son Kim Jong-Il.

 

The nuclear card was the only thing when it comes to threatening the U.S. or the international community.

 

For that nuclear capability, North Korea left millions of their people to starve to death.

 

Unfortunately, it is the most useful tool for the Kim Jung-un regime as well.

 

If the U.S. brought the issue of human rights to the  negotiation table with North Korea, North Korea would have collapsed a long time ago. However, the nations of the six-party talk including the U.S., Russia, Japan were not able to grasp the true nature of North Korea. They assumed incorrectly that it is a nation ruled by a reasonable and rational dictator.

 

 

 

Many times they were taken advantage of by North Korea, but they were only able to identify its tactics such as Salami tactics or brinkmanship but they did not understand its true character.

 

Anyway, North Korea launched rockets toward the world  as soon as Kim Jung-un took power.

 

The fact that it failed does not diminish its threat.

 

North Korea has succeeded in making its presence felt in the world.

 

And now the talk of the third nuclear test is in the air again.

 

No one at this point believes that Kim Jung-un would give up its nuclear ambitions and dismantle the current nuclear facilities.

 

Officially, the U.S. does not recognize North Korea as a nuclear state but the internal documents from the Pentagon suggest otherwise. Experts speak with one voice that North Korea has acquired both plutonium and enriched uranium.

The amount of cost that DPRK spent on its rocket launched last April is approximately equivalent to the amount of money it would take to feed its entire population for one and a half year.

 

Then, why does North Korea obsess with nuclear weapons at the cost of starving its own people?

 

It is because it believes the only and the last measure left for North Korea to ensure the survival of its regime.

 

Hoping that North Korea would reform and open up to the outside is  a sheer fantasy.

 

In order to reform, it has to give up the nuclear capability.

 

However, the North Korean regime simply cannot discard its nuclear card.

 

No matter how many people starve, the Kim’s regime would never abandon it. It is because the moment it does, the dictatorship would collapse.

 

 

For the same reason, the Lee Myong-Bak administration’s policy, which has demanded reforms and the opening-up of North Korea as the preconditions, was doomed to fail from the beginning.

 

Economic crisis causes alienation from its people but it can still rule the nation as if running a huge prison. However, the North Korean authorities are well aware of the fact that if it goes ahead with economic and political reforms, the foundation of the dictatorship would break down.

 

At the same time the abandonment of nuclear capabilities could result in its citizens demanding more political rights. And that would spell the end of the Kim Jung-un regime as it has been in the case of Qaddafi of Libya.

 

Consequently North Korea will never give up its nuclear ambition.

 

 

 

 

 

 

4. the Future of the Kim Jung-un Regime

 

At this point, despite the seeming stability of regime succession in North Korea, one should focus on largely two different aspects in order to judge whether Kim’s grip on power will last in a long-run.

 

One is nuclear capabilities and the other is the economic hardship.

 

The problem is that they are both unfavorable factors for the Kim Jong-un regime.

 

For the success of the Kim Jong-un regime, it should break away from the military-first policies and turn to the economy-first policies. But since this political line is contradictory to the dying instructions of Kim Jong-Il, North Korea cannot adopt the economy-first policies.

 

It is only possible when Kim Jung-un denies the legitimacy of his father’s instructions. Therefore, it is highly likely that the military-first politics will continue to be its governing ideology for the time being.

 

 

Consequently South Korea will constantly face military threats.

 

If those military threats cause uneasiness within South Korea, the length of Kim Jong-un regime will be extended a little longer.

 

South Korea experienced democratization and industrialization within the short time period of fifty years and has joined the ranks of the world’s top 20 economic powers. But it is very vulnerable to military tensions.

 

Moreover, as the system of dictatorship and the military-first policies are well implemented so far, it is not likely that the Kim Jong-un regime will get involved in power struggles in a short term.

 

However, possibilities of power struggles always exist due to the diverse interests and the imbalance of power distribution among the ruling coalition. In particular, since North Korean power group consists of inner circle, the possibility of power struggles is relatively high. Therefore, the result will be visible in two or three years.

For the young leader, Kim Jong-un, he has no choice but to follow the instructions of his predecessors, Kim Il-Seung and Kim Jong-Il.

 

Since he lacks the experience in governing and his power consolidation yet incomplete, he cannot suggest policies independently. From his position, following his father’s policies is more advantageous rather than taking an unnecessary risk by fundamentally changing nuclear and economic policies. Of course there is no one among the ruling elites who has the power to suggest fundamental changes or who could handle the fallouts when those attempts fail.

 

Therefore, it is highly likely that Kim Jong-un would maintain the Kim Jong-Il-style control and the planned economy and seek ways to solve the economic crisis by attracting foreign investment and exclusive industrial zones.

 

Consequently, Kim Jung-un will stick to its nuclear ambitions  and maintain its current economic policies to the end. In the meantime, human rights will be violated in North Korea more seriously than before.

 

And North Korea will carry out the third nuclear test within this year.

 

The North Korean authorities carried out the first nuclear test on October 9th, 2006 and the second nuclear test on May 26th, 2009 while the U.N. Security Council Resolution 1718 was in act. North Korea has no respect for the international society and its opinion.

 

No, the more the international community tries to discourage North Korea from advancing its nuclear ambitions, the more North Korea tends to gamble with the survival of its regime on the line.

 

In 2012, five nations from the nuclear talks including South Korea, the U.S., China, and Russia are facing presidential elections and general elections. It can be a high time for North Korea to carry out another nuclear test, because its neighboring nations will be focusing on domestic politics before the elections. In other words, the security in Northeast Asia can be particularly vulnerable this year. The North Korean leadership will never miss this chance.

 

 

The U.N. Security Council resolution 1874, adopted after the second nuclear test, will also fail to deter North Korea’s desire to conduct its next nuclear test.

 

What is more worrisome is that there are not that many additional sanctions left to deter North Korea should it test again.

 

Moreover, North Korea, having been isolated from the outside world for more than two decades, has come up with its own survival skills. It is to force its citizens to beg in the outside world.

 

Against this survival strategy, there is no reasonable and legal means for the international community to enforce sanctions.

 

In conclusion, North Korean national affairs will be affected by how stable the Kim Jung-un regime is and the overall direction its policies take.

 

From the perspective of behavior level, the instable  condition of the power will continue until Kim Jung-un’s power consolidation succeeds to the extent that he can remove members of the  ruling coalition.

In addition, even after Kim Jung-un stabilizes his grip on  power, his regime would face regime instability due to the nuclear issue.

 

Therefore, the question depends on how accurately the western community understands North Korea’s internal affairs and how we can find the measures to put pressure on North Korea, lastly how we can speak with one voice.

 

Now we have to realize the fact that the only key we have is to raise human rights issues with North Korea.

 

North Korea is a member of the United Nations. As a member of the U.N., we should continue to ask North Korea to comply with duties in accordance with the U.N. constitution and various UN conventions on human rights. That will be the only sure way to improve the lives of North Koreans and to encourage North Korea to be a normal state again.

 

Thank you.

 

 

Sudan, Kordofan, Chenguangchen, North Korea – riased in Queens Speech Debate and Parliamentary Questions

Posted by David Alton on

Sudan and South Sudan: May 17th 2012
Question
11.06 am
Asked By
Baroness Cox
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their response to the humanitarian crisis in the Republic of Sudan and South Sudan.
Baroness Northover:
My Lords, we are deeply concerned at the serious humanitarian impact of conflicts between Sudan and South Sudan, and within both countries. We are closely engaged with the UN and other humanitarian agencies to ensure an effective response to the needs of affected people, and are pressing both Governments to enter into political processes to resolve conflicts.
Baroness Cox:
I thank the Minister for her sympathetic reply. Is she aware that I recently returned from a visit to four camps on the Sudan/South Sudan border, where 250,000 refugees have fled from sustained aerial bombardment by Khartoum or been expelled by President al-Bashir’s commitment to turn Sudan into a unified Arabic Islamic state? Conditions in those camps were dire then; they are now becoming catastrophic, with a rapidly rising death toll. Will Her Majesty’s Government make strong, urgent representations to Khartoum to cease aerial bombardment of its own civilians, and across the border in South Sudan? It is in no way justified by President al-Bashir’s allegation of military action by South Sudan, which bears no comparison with his massive, sustained slaughter of his own people?
Baroness Northover:
My Lords, I am aware of the noble Baroness’s visit, and I thank her for giving me a copy of her draft report. I am aware, as the House is, of all her work in this area. She reports some terrible stories within it.
Continued aerial bombardments by the Sudanese armed forces are absolutely unacceptable, and we condemn them. Ministers and officials at our embassy have pressed this point during meetings with Sudanese counterparts. We worked very hard with Security Council partners to achieve unanimous support for UN Security Council Resolution 2046, which saw the Security Council demand under Chapter 7 of the UN charter a political resolution to conflict in Southern Kordofan and Blue Nile, as well as addressing wider issues in both countries. We are also very actively monitoring the humanitarian situation and getting supplies in place.
Lord Chidgey:
Is my noble friend aware that the UN Security Council passed that resolution on 2 May, and that within it was a two-week period for conflict to stop and negotiations to begin? That was on 16 May. There have been no negotiations starting; instead, the fighting has started again. What do the Government propose to suggest that the UN Security Council should do now?
Baroness Northover:
Yesterday, the special envoy to the Secretary-General briefed the Security Council on compliance by Sudan, South Sudan and the SPLM-North with Security Council Resolution 2046. He is keeping a close watch on the extent to which the ceasefire is not being adhered to. He identified a small window for restarting negotiations between Sudan and South Sudan. President Mbeke is travelling to Khartoum and Juba to engage with the parties and convene a meeting between them as soon as possible. We, the US and France have confirmed our readiness to consider sanctions if necessary.
Lord Alton of Liverpool:
My Lords, does the Minister concur with the view of Dr Mukesh Kapila, who was the high representative of this country and the United Nations in Sudan, that the second genocide of the 21st century is unfolding in South Kordofan? How can the Government continue to do business as usual with a regime that is led by someone who has been indicted for war crimes—crimes against humanity—by the International Criminal Court? How can we simply sustain diplomatic relations as though it is business as usual?
Baroness Northover:
My Lords, it is not business as usual but, as the noble Lord knows, the UK Government engage with all Governments in the hope of bringing about the changes that the noble Lord would wish to see. In embassy involvement, the only countries from which officials have been withdrawn are Syria and Iran, which was necessary for the protection of staff. In all other areas, including North Korea, there is engagement, but it is not business as usual. With regard to the crimes to which the noble Lord referred, it is clear that there have been indiscriminate attacks on civilians and war crimes. Indeed, President al-Bashir is indicted by the International Criminal Court. It is worth bearing in mind, too, that the case of Charles Taylor shows that international criminal justice is not time-limited.
Baroness Kinnock of Holyhead:
My Lords, the Minister will be aware that DfID has suspended long-term development aid to South Sudan in response to the Government’s decision to turn off the oil pipeline. However, does the noble Baroness recognise the tragic effects of such action for the people of a country that has such desperate needs at this time? Will the Government reconsider that decision in the light of the fact that two major donors, the United States and Norway, have not taken such action and will maintain all development assistance, while at the same time focusing on dialogue between South Sudan and Sudan?
Baroness Northover:
The noble Baroness rightly points to the implications of South Sudan cutting off its oil supplies, which constitute 98% of its revenue. It is extremely important to bring home to the Government of South Sudan the implications of that and that the international community will not simply bail them out. DfID is very much focused on humanitarian relief, which is extremely important, but the important issue here is to get the Governments in question to negotiate and take forward some of their responsibilities to their citizens.
The Lord Bishop of Wakefield:
My Lords, to pick up the point about humanitarian aid, given that children make up half the population of South Sudan, and that the malnutrition rate for children under five in the border areas averages between 15% and 22%, will the Minister please ensure that any UK humanitarian aid specifically supports the health and happiness of the children caught up in this tragedy?
Baroness Northover:
The right reverend Prelate makes a very good point on what is, I think, his birthday—many happy returns to him. The UK has contributed £10 million to the World Food Programme for general food distribution and £15 million to the Common Humanitarian Fund. We are acutely aware that it is children who will be particularly vulnerable in this situation. Therefore, the provision that the international community is trying to make is very much focused on their needs.
Lord Elton:
My Lords—
Baroness Tonge:
My Lords—
Noble Lords:
Order!
Lord Elton:
My Lords, are there plans in place to maintain the integrity of the delivery of humanitarian aid to the people who are intended to receive it at a time in the future when the application of sanctions may make Governments very anxious to acquire it for themselves?
Baroness Northover:
All these issues are extremely complex and the noble Lord rightly points to the potential impact of sanctions. As for humanitarian relief, a huge logistical effort is going on at the moment to get food and other supplies in place, particularly with the onset of the rains coming down the track and the potential of mass migration that may result, as noble Lords may be aware. We are monitoring this very closely and my colleague, Stephen O’Brien, is watching all the time what is happening.

Debate on the Queens Speech – Foreign Affairs – Thursday May 17th 2012.

3.29 pm
Lord Alton of Liverpool:
My Lords, my brief remarks today will urge Her Majesty’s Government to do all they possibly can to engage with China, especially in Africa, on the Korean peninsula and on questions of human rights.
Yesterday, with my noble friend Lady Cox, I met Bishop Macram Gassis, whose whole life has been spent working with the Dinka and Nuba people in Sudan. I subsequently spoke by telephone with the Minister for Africa, Mr Henry Bellingham MP, and relayed Bishop Gassis’s description of the murder and mutilation of children and the rape of women in South Kordofan.
Earlier today, along with my noble friend, I drew the attention of the House to the recent assessment of Dr Mukesh Kapila CBE that the second genocide of the 21st century is now unfolding. More than 1 million people have been affected as a regime, led by a president indicted by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity, systematically kills its own people. In parenthesis, I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, who responded to the Question earlier today, that what makes Sudan unique is that President Omar al-Bashir is the only head of state anywhere in the world to be indicted by the International Criminal Court. To have business as usual, including the visits of parliamentarians and business leaders to Sudan promoting business interests in Sudan, cannot be right when in Darfur 200,000 people were killed, in South Sudan 2 million people were killed and now, today, the second genocide of the 21st century is being played out in South Kordofan.
On 26 March I described the paralysis of the international community in addressing this issue, and nothing has changed. It is now a year since I told the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Howell of Guildford, about the situation there. He said in response:
“Reports of such atrocities will have to be investigated and, if they prove to be true, those responsible will need to be brought to account”.—[Official Report, 21/6/11; col. WA 294.]
Nine months later, he said that,
“we continue … to seek urgent access to those most affected by the conflict”.—[Official Report, 9/11/11; col. WA 66.]
However, no one has been brought to justice, the bombs continue to rain down, a genocide is unfolding, an aid plane last tried to take in November last and was pursued for 50 miles by Sudanese war planes.
So what can we do? Seventy per cent of Sudan’s oil is in the south and most of it is bought by China. While the killing continues, the oil will not flow. More than any other country, China is in a position to insist that the bombing stops, that humanitarian relief is allowed in, and that all sides participate in peace talks, which China should broker.
North Sudan is also considerably indebted to China. It has external debts of around $38 billion. Both China and the United Kingdom should use the leverage of debt relief to insist on an end to aerial bombardment and access for humanitarian aid. It is unconscionable that Britain should write off Sudanese debt while it kills with impunity, and I hope that when the Minister responds he will tell us that he concurs with that view.
China is in Africa because it has a scarcity of oil, minerals and food. Africa provides a solution. The big question will be: can China avoid the age-old temptation to exercise hegemony and, instead, use its statecraft to resolve conflict? Short of the arms trade treaty, referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Judd, a few moments ago, it would make a dramatic difference if China and the United Kingdom stopped the flow of arms—many made in China—into Africa. However, if we need to engage with China in Africa, we must also encourage it to use its diplomacy and genius elsewhere too.
Last night, at a meeting of the North Korea All-Party Parliamentary Group, which I chair, we heard from Mark Fitzpatrick, the director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, and Mrs Sun-young Park, a member of the National Assembly of the Republic of Korea. I have sent the Minister a copy of their papers. Three million people died in the last Korean War, including an estimated 400,000 Chinese soldiers and, I might add, 1,000 British servicemen, more than in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Falklands combined. We need to engage with China to encourage the United States formally to end the state of war with North Korea. This does not imply appeasement—quite the reverse. It is what we did with great effect during the Helsinki process. There are some welcome harbingers.
China’s recent decision to repatriate North Koreans to Seoul is to be welcomed; so is their admonition to North Korea to look after the welfare of their own citizens rather than to promote nuclear ambitions; China’s decision not to obstruct the recent United Nations Human Rights Council’s statement on human rights issues in North Korea; and the Security Council statement on the recent rocket launch. What is really needed is a Beijing peace conference where old hatreds are set aside and constructive, but critical, engagement seeks ways to achieve a lasting peace, prosperity, reconciliation and the reunification of the Korean peninsula.
In addition to China’s role in the world, I want to mention one other question concerning human rights. The world’s attention has recently been focused on the plight of Chen Guangcheng, the blind civil and human rights activist, jailed for four years after challenging China’s one-child policy. I have raised this case in your Lordships’ House many times. Having taken sanctuary in the US Embassy in Beijing, Chen is now held in a hospital unit. The Economist, in its editorial last week, said:
“At rare moments, the future of a nation, even one teeming with 1.3 billion souls, can be bound up in the fate of a single person”.
It said that what happened to Chen,
“matters enormously to China’s future”.
It also matters to the United States. If they have removed Chen from safety but failed to secure safe passage for him and his family, it will cast serious doubts on American diplomacy. Have they let a brave man down? Have they been taken for fools? If Chen is punished and the US humiliated it will signal a troubling shift in super power relations.
Chen’s case also matters to countries like our own. We have aided and abetted the very policies that led to Chen’s imprisonment in the first place. It has taken a blind man to see that to which we have shamefully closed our eyes. This remarkable Shawshank has caught the public imagination and blown open a policy of coercion and eugenics, a policy which I sought to outlaw the last time we had a Bill on development aid before your Lordships’ House. Over three decades, British aid given to UNFPA and IPPF has gone to the China Population Association. The CPA, in turn, has implemented a one-child policy that makes it a criminal offence to be pregnant and illegal to have a brother or a sister. It is a policy which has led to an estimated 400 million babies being aborted or killed through infanticide; a gendercide policy which favours the birth of male children so that one out of every six girls is aborted or abandoned. China is a country where 500 women take their own lives every single day. China has the highest suicide rate for women anywhere in the world.
China is a great nation, but it does itself no credit with something like the one-child policy. Clearly, we must engage with China both on human rights questions and on its role in the world, not least on the Korean peninsula and in countries like Sudan.
4.27 pm
Baroness Cox:
My Lords, I will focus on recent developments in Sudan and South Sudan and in Burma. I return to the former having already raised it in Oral Questions today because a humanitarian catastrophe is imminent, the statistics should be compelling and the need for a response is so urgent.
First, in Sudan, half a million people are displaced from Abyei, the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile by Khartoum’s ground and aerial offensives, with many sheltering in caves with deadly snakes or in forests, many dying from hunger as they cannot harvest crops and many killed and injured by bombs. In Blue Nile, on 11 May, Sudan Armed Forces—SAF—bombed a mountainous area crowded with internally displaced people near Baw, with missiles fired from east and west of the county. Last week, over 3,000 IDPs fled from south-west Baw county and were trapped at the border without transport or food. More than 240 IDPs had already died in the first week of May, including Chief Haj Jabir Dafalla and his family. Many more lives will soon be lost unless humanitarian assistance reaches the area within days, but the Khartoum Government have denied access by aid organisations to those in need.
Secondly, 250,000 refugees have been forced to flee into South Sudan by Khartoum’s offensives. I recently visited Yida camp, where there are now at least 30,000 refugees, with 700 arriving in a single day, many ill, having walked for seven days without adequate food or water. With the imminent rainy season, there will be no access for food supplies. In Jamam camp, with nearly 37,000 refugees from Blue Nile, Oxfam’s director of emergency response calls the situation desperate, saying:
“There is simply not enough water and we are running out of options and we are running out of time”.
We have also met refugees from Abyei who fled last year’s fighting. Khartoum’s forces have defied a UN Security Council requirement to withdraw, thereby preventing people from returning home for fear of atrocities perpetrated by SAF last year, including murder, rape and torture. We visited camps in Bahr el Ghazal without clean water, food or other essential supplies.
Thirdly, tens of thousands of people are suffering from al Bashir’s commitment to turn Sudan into an Arabic, Islamic state and to evict those deemed “southerners”. The BBC estimates that there are more than 500,000 ethnic South Sudanese in the north. Following an 8 April deadline from Khartoum to formalise their status or leave the country, many fled to South Sudan. Some 15,000 were stranded in Kosti, unable to take boats to South Sudan because of restrictions from Khartoum. They are now being airlifted to Juba, to an unknown fate. Others who have previously fled include thousands in camps near Renk. When we visited them last month, they were living in makeshift shelters, which will never withstand the imminent rains.
Fourthly, Khartoum is also bombing targets across the border in South Sudan. On 23 April, while we were still there, two MiGs bombed a market in Bentiu. On 7 and 8 May, locations in Unity, Upper Nile, and Northern Bahr el Ghazal states were bombed.
When independence was achieved in South Sudan, the war had left a dire humanitarian situation. Now this new nation also has to cope with the massive influx of refugees and forced returnees and the aerial bombardment of people by its northern neighbour. I ask the Minister whether a more robust response to Khartoum’s aerial bombardment is not now needed, such as targeted sanctions, including, for example, the refusal of diplomatic visas to government members. At the moment, they are carrying on their policies with impunity.
Too often there is a response that implies moral equivalence between the policies of the Governments of Sudan and South Sudan. There is no such equivalence. As my noble friend Lord Alton has highlighted, Sudan’s President is indicted by the ICC. He has dismissed the elected governor of South Kordofan and replaced him with another ICC-indicted war criminal. As has been highlighted time and again, he is also carrying out constant aerial bombardment of civilians in his own country and transgressing an international border to bomb civilians in South Sudan. He is pursuing a ruthless racist policy of intimidation, with the expulsion of citizens deemed to be “southerners”.
In contrast, the Government of South Sudan have many problems and inevitable weaknesses but they are not guilty of any such abhorrent policies. South Sudan was fiercely criticised for taking the town of Heglig. However, it was being used by Khartoum as a base for attacks on the South. President Salva Kiir has withdrawn his troops, unlike Khartoum, which has refused to withdraw its troops from Abyei. South Sudan has also been criticised for closing the oil pipeline, but this can be seen as a desperate response to Khartoum’s imposition of extortionate prices. This morning the Minister confirmed that DfID has withdrawn or reduced its development aid for South Sudan in response to the closure of the pipeline. Will the Government rethink this harsh policy? The humanitarian needs of South Sudan are legion and have been detailed in previous debates, so I will not repeat them. However, it cannot be acceptable for DfID to reduce development aid to a nation that is trying, albeit with many problems and fallibilities, to develop democracy and civil society in face of massive challenges, many inflicted by its northern neighbour with impunity.
I turn briefly to Burma, and especially to the plight of ethnic nationals, whom I have visited twice this year. There is much to commend and celebrate in today’s Burma, including the freedom and political engagement of the heroic Aung San Suu Kyi and the release of hundreds of political prisoners. However, the plight of ethnic national peoples, such as the Shan, Kachin and Rohingya, is still cause for great concern. We were in Shan state when the brief ceasefire was broken by intense fighting, and Kachin state is experiencing some of the most intense conflict and violations of human rights in Burma’s recent history. The oppression of the Rohingya people remains as brutal as ever.
Deep concern was graphically expressed by one of the leaders of Shan state, who said that when the light went on in Rangoon, everyone ran to the spotlight and did not wait to see them hiding in the darkness. The ethnic national peoples fear that, as the Burmese Government gain credibility, the country will be open to massive aid and investment, which may be used to exploit further the ethnic national people’s resource-rich lands. For example, the plans for 25 new dams could force tens of thousands from their previous homes with no compensation and destroy the environment. Many voices express caution about premature optimism and lifting of sanctions—rightly so.
Therefore, I ask the Minister whether the Government will reassure the ethnic national peoples that they will be fully included in all discussions about the future of Burma, so that they no longer feel marginalised, vulnerable to exploitation and left in the darkness. Only then will we all be able to celebrate with genuine joy and integrity the new-found freedoms of the beautiful, but in many places still tragic, land of Burma.
4.34 pm
Lord Flight:
My Lords, towards the end of the gracious Speech there are the somewhat opaque words:
“My Government will build strategic partnerships with the emerging powers”.
I would have liked that to refer specifically to our friends in the Commonwealth, but I was very heartened by what the noble Lord, Lord Howell, had to say in his excellent opening speech. To me it is particularly relevant in the face of the likely impending break-up of the eurozone and the impact that that is likely to have on European economies and our relations. The immediate and most important foreign affairs issue is what is happening on the continent. There is the obvious fight to the death between economic and market forces and political commitment, where the lessons of history tell us that major economic forces tend to prevail. There is the obvious point that many have made before—that for disparate economies to share a currency is extremely difficult at the best of times. Indeed, I was surprised to see an article arguing that the Commonwealth was likely to be a more successful group of economies to share a currency than the EU countries.
Everyone knows that if you are going to share a currency you have to have transfer payments from the more successful to the less successful. It boils to whether Germany is willing to make the necessary transfer payments on a regular basis to the uncompetitive economies, which would amount to some 35% per annum of German GDP. That seems pretty unlikely. We live at present with the likely impending default and exit from the euro of Greece. I expect that a firewall will probably prevail in the near term to protect Spain, Portugal and Italy, but that does not address the fundamental problem of lack of competitiveness. These economies cannot recover and grow, and they cannot put their public finances right, if they are 35% uncompetitive against the successful parts of Europe. The issue is whether the break-up will be chaotic or orderly. We all hope that it will be orderly but, whatever, there would be economic pain in the short term, although once the necessary devaluations have occurred and these currencies are competitive again, do not understate their ability to bounce back within two or three years.
What British foreign policy needs to focus on right now is what our attitude is towards the EU in the wake of these likely events. What will be happening is centrifugal forces. The nation states of Europe with their own currencies and central banks returned will need to follow economic policies appropriate to their circumstances. Some may even need to impose capital controls. The EU, which has been centralising for 40 years and trying to move towards a single political unit, is suddenly going to be pulled in the other direction. What is our view towards this? What would be our view if there were an attempt to leap towards political union? I very much doubt it, but that obviously could be one reaction.
What the UK has always wanted to see is an area of free trade and co-operation, achieving consensus, not enforcing policies but moulding more and more European co-operation together over time—but naturally and not coming by command from the centre. It will also need a much cheaper EU. I checked with the Treasury, because I could not believe a report in the newspapers that in 2013-14 Britain’s net contributions to the EU would be £31.3 billion. The Treasury confirmed that figure to me. I thought that it was still only £12 billion or £13 billion. It is not a sum of money that this country can afford. But, more than that, I cannot see that Italy and Spain, the countries that are going to be experiencing problems with the euro, will be willing to make large financial contributions to a massive EU structure. We may not necessarily say it in public, but this country needs to think about the political implications of the euro imploding and what policies it will adopt in that event.
For some time the EU clearly has not been the engine of growth that people thought it would be when we first applied to join it way back in the 1960s and 1970s. It has turned out to be a relatively failed economic region. I go back to where I started. We need quickly to develop effective commercial and investment relations with the emerging BRIC economies, in particular with the Commonwealth economies. As I have pointed out before, my particular plea is for a much closer relationship between this country and India—politically, economically and potentially even defence-wise. The University of Cambridge will tell you that the only two countries that matter in terms of our universities and their quality of students are America and India. The Prime Minister of India has virtually indicated that he would like to see a special relationship being established for top postgraduate students coming to this country, which would enable a lot of the hassle of the visa process to be handled in a friendlier fashion.
I can think of other areas where there is considerable scope for special relationships between this country and India. We are all aware that certain problems need to be resolved but I do not think that they are insoluble. The Indian community is a successful and dynamic part of this country and there is a great deal of sympathy between the people of India and the people of Britain. It is time to galvanise that while not ignoring the other members of the Commonwealth. Important things are going on in Africa and in the older members of the Commonwealth, particularly Canada, where there is much scope for this country to find commercial partners.
There is a nice commitment in the gracious Speech. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Green, is travelling the world doing his best to generate trade deals on the ground, but more needs to be done in terms of political initiatives. We need to face up to the fact that the Europe that will emerge on the back of what is likely to happen to the euro will not be a great economic engine for this country.
4.42 pm

The Plight of Christian Women in Pakistan and Egypt – Meeting In Parliament May 15th.

Posted by David Alton on

At a well-attended meeting in Parliament held this evening, and chaired by Lord Alton of Liverpool, Peers and MPs heard first-hand accounts about the plight of the persecuted church in Pakistan and Egypt – and in particular about the plight of Christian women, whom Lord Alton said faced “double persecution – both on account of their beliefs and their gender.”

 The Charity Aid To The Church In Need  presented parliamentarians with copies of their new report: Christians and the Struggle for Religious Freedom  looking at persecution of Christians in 13 countries, with an introduction asserting the importance of religious freedom; and with copies of  Christian Women in Pakistan and Egypt: A Briefing. The speakers included Mrs.Asiya Nasir, a Christian woman who is a member of Pakistan’s National Assembly. The meeting also heard from a Pakistani Catholic woman and two Archbishops.  

 

 

Archbishop Joannes Zakaria

Joannes Zakaria is the Coptic Catholic Archbishop of Luxor. At nearly 63, he has been a bishop for 19 years.

Before coming to Luxor, he was chaplain to the Coptic Catholic disapora in the US, based in Beverly Hills, California. It came at a time when the diaspora community started to grow and after becoming bishop his pastoral priority has been to encourage the Coptic faithful to stay in the country.

Leading a vast diocese, stretching down to Aswan and beyond, Christians in the Luxor region number 18,000 in a total population of four million. Problems of discrimination and oppression against Christians are uniquely serious in the diocese. Arson attacks on churches have taken place. Over the past four years, at least three church buildings in his diocese have caught fire in suspicious circumstances. 

He states: “In 2011, from the final days under Moubarak through the post-Mubarak days of the so-called Arab Spring, it seemed to many like the clock was being turned back again to the days of the Early Church’s suffering. Now, the situation of Christians in Egypt, is so difficult [regarding] schools, universities, and getting a job. Christians in Egypt have lost hope and they leave their country if they can.

“As a Coptic Catholic bishop, I am concerned about Christian women who face physical and sexual violence, captivity, exploitation in forced domestic servitude or commercial sexual exploitation, and financial benefit to the individuals who secure forced conversions

 

Thomsena Anjum

 

Thomsena Anjum has seen first hand many of the problems which affect Christians in Pakistan. She has experience of situations in which Christian women were denied access to drinking wells – because local Muslims claimed that the wells would be contaminated if they were used by Christians. This echoes the situation of Asia Bibi – Muslim women refused to drink the water she had fetched – when she was accused of making the blasphemous remarks for which she was sentenced to death in November 2010.

 

Mrs Anjum and her family suffered persecution first hand after her youngest son Reshayl was falsely accused by Muslim students at Lahore Grammar School of insulting the Muslim prophet Mohammad in March 2009. In May 2009, the family received threatening letters demanding they pay sums of more than 1 million rupees or accept the consequences. Mrs Anjum and a driver were shot at by an Islamic cleric when they were driving to deliver books to 50 Non-Formal and Adult Literacy Centres.  The bullets passed close to Mrs Anjum’s neck but neither she nor the driver were injured. Police refused to let them register a report after they said that they were working for a Christian NGO and had been fired on by an Islamic cleric.

 

“For the past 16 years, I have been engaged in several projects run by my charity www.tamir.org.pk in the district of Faisalabad. Because of my work with disabled people, I was awarded the ‘Good Citizen’ title by the Army Monitoring Cell and city Mayor in 2000.

 

“The same year, I was selected as District Council Member of ‘Pakistan Bait-Ul-Mall’ for Minorities in Faisalabad. My role was to work with Christian families, assess their need, recommend and process their financial application under the ‘Food Support Programme’. I was able to help more than 4,000 Christian families in four years.  

 

“In 2004, I was responsible for Literacy project run by Tamir and District Literacy Department. I extensively visited villages and opened Adult Literacy centres in 50 villages. These programmes connected me with my Christian community and I have experience of their plight and pain of discrimination they suffered on daily basis as second class citizens.”

Archbishop Joseph Coutts

Joseph Coutts is the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Karachi. The most populous city in the country, Karachi is the financial centre and previous capital of Pakistan. He is involved in inter-faith dialogue with Muslims in a bid to bring stability to the small and frequently persecuted Christian community in Pakistan. Bishop Coutts is the National Director of Caritas Pakistan.

Born in Amritsar, India, on 21July 1945, he studied for the priesthood at Christ the King Seminary, Karachi and was ordained on 9January 1971. On 5 May 1988, he became co-adjutor Bishop of Hyderabad in Pakistan serving a diocese serving 150,000 Catholics. On 27 June 1998, he was appointed Bishop of Faisalabad following the suicide of Bishop John Joseph. Bishop Joseph shot himself as a final protest against the death sentence handed out to Christian Ayub Massih, after he was convicted of committing blasphemy in a public place and sentenced to death on April 27 under Pakistan’s Blasphemy Laws. 

Between December 2006 and February 2007, Bishop Coutts and two senior Muslim leaders received death threats after attending an inter-faith programme in a local Islamic school.  On 26 June 2007, he was awarded the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt’s Shalom Prize for justice and peace for his inter-faith work in the country, building relations with the Muslim community. On 25 January 2012 he was appointed Archbishop of Karachi.

Bishop Coutts states: “In my country, the rise of extremism and growing problems relating to governance and law enforcement have fundamentally compromised the place of religious freedom in society. Hence, individual religious communities are at risk from verbal abuse, physical violence and a denial of basic rights, most especially legal justice. The breakdown of law and order has put Christian communities at particular risk… Christians and their faith have been mocked and disparaged in schools and other state institutions, their churches have been targeted, their homes destroyed, they have been accused of crimes they have not committed, punished without fair trial – and often without any trial at all. Their livelihoods have been destroyed and their very lives endangered… Who will listen? Who will act?

 

Mining In the Democratic Republic of The Congo – and the use of child labour

Posted by David Alton on

Democratic Republic of Congo

Question: May 15th 2012

2.51 pm

Asked by

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what has been their response to reports that state-owned mining assets in the Democratic Republic of the Congo have been sold over the last two years to offshore companies for less than one-twentieth of their commercial value.

The Minister of State, Foreign and Commonwealth Office (Lord Howell of Guildford):My Lords, we share the concerns about the DRC mining sector and the mis-selling of state-owned assets. We continue to press the DRC Government to improve governance in this area. The Secretary of State for International Development raised this with President Kabila when they met in March. The UK is funding the PROMINES programme, which aims to strengthen transparency in the mining sector. We also support the international efforts to set standards for all extractive industries.

Lord Chidgey:My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Does he share the widespread concern over the legitimacy of transactions that involve companies quoted on the London Stock Exchange and UK Overseas Territories such as the BVI? The Chancellor has turned his attention to these with regard to stemming personal tax avoidance but does not appear to have looked yet at corporate tax avoidance. Will the Government support the call by the DRC opposition parties for a full inquiry into the extent of what appears to be very widespread corruption in this field?

Lord Howell of Guildford:We share the concern about corruption and the need for major companies to observe the highest possible standards in their performance. The instruments through which this should be done are the EU transparency directive and the work of the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, which is excellently chaired by Clare Short and is currently planning to set up a strategic working group to look at extending EITI standards to require a much closer look at issues of the kind that my noble friend has raised.

Lord Alton of Liverpool:My Lords, does the Minister agree that the extraordinarily rich deposits of minerals that are held in the DRC should be a blessing but have become a curse as marauding bands and the DRC’s neighbours have plundered those resources, leading to conflicts that have taken the lives of between 5 million and 6 million people, many of them children? Does he know that at present it is estimated that 40% of those working in the DRC’s mining industry are children? When the DRC review of mining practices takes place this year, will he use the extensive leverage that the Government have through their aid programme to ensure that at least children are removed from the mines and protected in the future?

Lord Howell of Guildford:The noble Lord is on to an excellent cause and a very good concern. Our view is that the PROMINES programme, which now will be launched in October and for which we have high hopes, will raise the standards and control better all activities of mining, including artisanal mining of the sort which employs children. That programme includes explicit activities to address the issues of child labour, including supporting initiatives to enable the artisanal mining subsector to comply with supply chain diligence standards which are increasingly being applied—for instance, in connection with the OECD due diligence guidance. We see the PROMINES programme as the avenue through which to increase the pressures and to overcome the appalling deprivations and dangers which are evident particularly for children in this sector.

Lord Triesman:My Lords, I accept of course that there are a number of transparency conventions in Europe and on a world basis, some of which have been useful in dealing with topics such as the illicit mining of diamonds in the past. Given the difficulties that have just been described, particularly in relation to children and the lack of transparency in supply chains, would there not be a good case for company reports in the United Kingdom to be candid and be required to say how transparency issues have been dealt with so that the legitimacy of their operations would be clear to everyone?

Lord Howell of Guildford:Yes, that is exactly the kind of proposal that Clare Short, as chair of the EITI, is examining in her strategic working group. Of course, not every company and certainly not every country has signed up to the EITI. Those that have are required to make certain reports, although those reports do not cover all the issues we are discussing now. Her idea, and that of the EITI, is to see whether the requirements for standards for signatories to the EITI can be increased and, obviously, for other countries—and the DRC being a candidate country—to sign up to the whole initiative.

Lord Avebury:My Lords, as I understood the Minister’s reply to my noble friend’s supplementary question, the rules of the EITI do not at present require candidate countries or full members to disclose accounts of the sales of mining assets. Will my noble friend press not only for sales to be disclosed but for countries that are candidates or full members to publish due diligence reports identifying the purchasers and verifying that they are fit and proper persons to comply with the EITI rules, and ensure that the rules are amended for that purpose?

Lord Howell of Guildford:I repeat that this is exactly what the EITI initiative proposes. Incidentally, this body was set up in 2002 by the previous Government. It has been a considerable influence and success, although it has a long way to go in certain areas. These are just the sort of proposals for an extended authority of the EITI that will be considered by the strategic working group. That aim should certainly be supported by the Government and all Governments who are full members of the EITI now. We recognise the need also for candidates to be required to move to higher standards in order to become full members.

The Lord Bishop of Wakefield:My Lords, related to the questions we have just heard, how are DfID’s funds allocated to government programmes in the Democratic Republic of Congo being used to ensure that the DRC Government tackle corruption and non-transparency in the mining sector? Is the Minister’s previous answer related to that or are there other questions to be asked about transparency and corruption?

Lord Howell of Guildford:There is a lot more to be said because this is a major subject. DfID programmes are in operation. They are under review and therefore I cannot give a precise up-to-date answer on the size and specific focus of programmes. Generally, the aims behind the DfID programmes are to decrease corruption and to improve the social and educational conditions, and, thereby, conditions in the mining sector generally.

Lord Davies of Coity:Can the Minister tell the House the extent to which the Government believe that British companies are involved in the offshore companies that are involved in this expertise?

Lord Howell of Guildford:We know that British companies are involved in the DRC and we know that certain deals have been made—some of them reportedly far below market prices. We support the EU transparency directive, and I urge all companies listed on the FTSE 100 to observe the highest possible standards and disclose their activities in the way we would expect of responsible companies. That continues to be the position.

Extracts from a talk on Human Trafficking: Blackburn Cathedral 11th May 2012 – and link to powerpoint presentation

Posted by David Alton on

Extracts from a talk on Human Trafficking:  Blackburn Cathedral May 2012 – David Alton

Follow this link to the power point presentation used with the Blackburn Cathedral talk – or click on the word powerpoints in the box above:

Human Trafficking powerpoint presentation

Trafficking in human beings, particularly in women and children, is a modern day slave trade. Most people assume that the slave trade was long since consigned to the dustbin of history by William Wilberforce.

In reality the trade in human beings is a rapidly growing scourge hat affects countries and families on every continent.

Those trafficked may be forced into prostitution or to work as domestics, as labourers, or market traders and in a variety of other jobs. Recent research suggests that, at an absolute minimum, hundreds of women and children are being trafficked into the UK each year.

Trafficking is a form of coercion. Victims of trafficking  are unable to cut all ties with those who brought them here.

Victims come from Albania, Kosovo, Russia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria, China, South East Asia and West Africa.

Some may be forcibly abducted and brought into the UK, but many victims put themselves or their children in the hands of traffickers to escape poverty and discrimination. Promised well paid jobs, education, marriage, many believe  they will be able to send money back to their families. In reality  they often end up  exploited as sex slaves in London and our other major cities.

Escape for these victims is impossible. The traffickers often pay for the cost of their victims’ passage into the UK.

Travel costs are then inflated by charges for food, accommodation, and interest on money borrowed from their traffickers. Burdened with debt and unable to secure legitimate employment, the victims are  extremely vulnerable.

Should they refuse to submit to the traffickers’ demands or attempt to escape, they can have their passports confiscated or are subject to intimidation, violence, torture or rape. Traffickers also make threats of violence against friends and family as a way of ensuring their victims keep working and do not try to escape.

Girls from countries where trafficking is common arrive into the UK unaccompanied. Told to apply for asylum at the port of entry, the girls are placed into the care of the local social services department. These girls subsequently disappear when their traffickers make contact with them and are never seen by the authorities or their families again.  Since 1995, 66 children who arrived unaccompanied in the UK have gone missing from West Sussex Social Services alone, over a two year period.

The Head of London’s Vice Squad complained that his officers are unable to tackle this scourge because of a lack of guidance and legislation. In the unlikely event of traffickers being caught, they often receive prison sentences of no more than two years.

The popular myth is that slavery is a thing of the past, but more people are trafficked today than were enslaved in the entire history of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

The UN believes it is the second largest criminal activity in the world, second only to drug smuggling; that it nets $36 billion a year to the traffickers; and that 100,000 Modern Day Slaves are trafficked around the EU each year.

Trafficking is about deception. It is about misleading and dishonest information. Trafficking is about people believing they are going somewhere to do something entirely different to what they are asked to do. Or the children who are pawns in debt bondage whose alcoholic or drug dependent parents get a lump sum payment from traffickers to take their children to London or other cities to ‘educate them’Then there is sex trafficking. Girls mostly, with threats of violence to themselves and their families if they try to escape or keep money from their ‘clients’ (2,200 brothels in London alone).

The number of rescued victims in the Government’s victim support scheme run by the Salvation Army gives you some indication of the scale and range: 246 in the last 6 months alone, just under half of them men.

Of the 15,000 domestic workers coming to Britain a year, approaching 700 are likely to have been abused in some way. Many of these would have been trafficked, many working for diplomatic staff and beyond the reach of the law.

Successful convictions are appallingly few: no more than two dozen a year, and as few as 16 in 2010.

Members of Parliamentary need to keep calling Government to account, and keeping trafficking on the agenda.

Victims need small sums to get them up on their feet, and survive.

The Human Trafficking Foundation, which chaired by Anthony Steen  wants to establish a small Victim Fund which can – without undue bureaucracy – pay for cookers, clothes, text books and the like.

All of us can do something practical. In particular we can help raise awareness on Anti-Slavery Day (October 18th).

We can’t help everyone, but we can help someone. The man or woman who saves a single life saves the world.

Shining A Light On The Scandal of Mexico’s Migrants and Transmigrants

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A Mexican Dominican Bishop, Raul Vera OP, was recently in London, accompanied by Stephanie Brewer, a human rights activist, representing a 27-strong coalition of charities and NGOs. Bishop Vera is Bishop of Saltillo, Coahuila.

 

Earlier this year he was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize and in 2010 was a Rafto Human Rights Prize Laureate. He has been a fierce critic of criminality and corruption and is a defender of disadvantaged and vulnerable groups. The coalition’s campaign statement can be found at http://tinyurl.com/cu2jjdra href=”http://http://tinyurl.com/cu2jjd”> 

 

Bishop Vera and Miss Brewer were in Europe to raise awareness about the plight of migrants who enter Mexico from Central America – desperate people hoping to get across the border of Mexico into the USA. The migrants’ journey all too frequently becomes a journey into a world of extortion, ransom, exploitation, violence and the shadowy gangland world of drugs and weapons. It is one of the most desperate and dangerous journeys in the world.  I met the bishop with Jeremy Corbyn MP, who chairs the Parliamentary Group on Mexico and who has raised these depredations in the House of Commons.

 

Bishop Vera, whose diocese adjoins Mexico’s border with Texas, has been directly involved in the network of migrants’ shelters established to give help to illegal migrants fleeing destitution in Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador and Nicaragua. He is a passionate man deeply disturbed by the vicious circle into which so many people have been sucked and then trapped. Their crime? – to seek a better life for themselves and for their families.

 

The bishop described how migrants cross into Mexico using routes which are often over-looked by Mexican Government agencies.

 

Once inside the country they are then liable to be kidnapped by mafia-style gangs. In particular, freight trains on which migrants seek transport are targeted by the gangs and the migrants are abducted.   With complete impunity the gangs then load people into trucks – just like cattle – and transport them to hideaways. Next, they contact relatives whom migrants were hoping to reach in the United States. Then they demand a ransom of thousands of dollars. Unable to pay, the required ransom money is provided by loan sharks – money lenders who are often related to the abductors. Migrants are then indebted to their owners and treated as chattel – modern slaves. They are spirited into the United States, often forced to carry in drugs, and on arrival they are initiated into a seedy world of narcotics, vice, and every illegal activity known to man. There is also a link with gun running.

 

Bishop Vera says there is a shocking culture of impunity – with the State authorities seemingly impotent and unwilling to act. He says that in the Mexican states of Chiapas, Oaxaca, Tabasco and Veracruz  – and in Mexico City – the vast majority of the journeying migrants are detained by the authorities but many of these, too, become victims of abuse and exploitation.

 

Mexico stands out as a country which, almost uniquely, is both a destination and transit route for migrants.

 

It is also the country to which illegal migrants from Central America are returned if they are apprehended in Arizona or Texas. The Central Americans who are using Mexico as a passageway to the USA are joined by thousands of indigenous Mexicans who are themselves try to get into the USA in search of jobs. This creates a nexus of economic, political, humanitarian and social entanglements.

 

We are not talking small numbers. Bishop Vera says that the spider’s web of humanitarian tragedy, experienced by both Mexican and foreign migrants, has led to 20,000 kidnappings every year – and he angrily insists that the authorities in Mexico, Central America, the USA and Europe, have been turning a blind eye to events like the massacre of 72 migrants in San Fernando, Tamaulipas, and mass graves which contain the remains of hundreds of victims.

 

In 2011 the bishop was one of those who launched the “Campaign for the Right to Migrate Free From Violence”. He and the Campaign holds The Mexican  authorities “responsible for forced disappearances, kidnappings, extortion, torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment against migrants” and he says that this responsibility stems from their failure to stop – and in some cases by colluding with – organised crime groups who attack and exploit the migrants. Over the past five years 47,000 people have been killed in Mexico’s war on drugs; more than 16,000 people were killed last year alone and 1000 children have been killed since 2006.

 

Through the work he has done on the ground – he founded the Fray Juan de Larios Centre for Human Rights and the Bethlehem Migrant Shelter, in Saltillo, he has seen, first-hand, terrible assaults on human dignity.

 

Fr.Heyman Vazquez Medina, who runs a shelter in Chiapas State, says that “Of every ten women who pass through this shelter, six have suffered sexual assault.” At Tapachula cemetery, in the same State, Amnesty International in their excellent report, “Invisible Victims” produce a photograph of the bodies of migrant workers literally dumped and lightly covered in the passageways between the cemetery’s graves.

 

Bishop Vera would like British Catholics to write to the Foreign Office Minister responsible for Latin America, Jeremy Browne MP, and to their own MPs, urging them to step up the pressure to find solutions to this dire situation.

 

Bishop Vera wants: Mexico to

  • provide transmigrants with legal immigration status;
  • address the needs of its own migrants
  • ensure that repatriated migrants are give safe passage home
  • end the separation of children and parents often sent to different destinations
  • protect migrant shelters
  • end the culture of intolerable impunity for the gangland Mafiosi who kidnap, massacre, commit sexual violence
  • create a specialist body to provide oversight, care and investigation; and
  • collaborate with other States in the region to end this traffic and abuse of human beings.

 

 

Mr.Browne can be contacted by writing to him at the House of Commons, London SW1 OAA or jeremy.browne.mp@parliament.uk

 

 

Invitation to a presentation on the persecution of Christian women in the world today – Committee Room 12, House of Commons on Tuesday May 15th at 5.30pm. See the following details:

Posted by David Alton on

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

11th May 2012

 

 

 

 

Re: Invitation to a presentation on the persecution of Christian women in the world today

Chaired by Professor the Lord Alton of Liverpool

 

House of Commons – Committee Room 12

Tuesday, 15th May 2012 5.30-6.30pm

 

“Religious freedom is the first of human rights since it expresses the fundamental

 reality of the human person.”                    Pope Benedict XVI – 9th January 2012

 

At a time of increasing oppression and persecution of Christians across the world, I am writing to invite you to a presentation and discussion of one overlooked dimension of that persecution – the impact on Christian women. If, as Christians, women are second-class citizens, as Christian women they are barely citizens at all.

 

The event, on Tuesday 15th May, includes:

  • First-hand accounts of women in Egypt and Pakistan with direct experience of persecution
  • Archbishop Joseph Coutts assessing the plight of Christian women in his native Pakistan
  • Bishop Joannes Zakaria assessing the plight of Christian women in his native Egypt

 

The event will also see the launch of Christians and the Struggle for Religious Freedom, a new report produced by the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need. The dossier examines the importance of religious freedom and provides incident reports of recent acts of persecution including those targeting women. Copies of the report will be available at the event.

 

Countless reports by independent bodies have shown that Christians are the most persecuted religious group in the world. We need to establish a new consensus of rejection of such violations, and to make it a greater priority of our foreign policy to seek to prevent them. We would be delighted to count on your participation.

 

Please let us know you are coming to the event by contacting John Pontifex at Aid to the Church in Need: JohnP@acnuk.org  mobile: 07815 591427

 

I look forward to seeing you. With my very best wishes,

Professor the Lord David Alton of Liverpool

 

—————————————————————————————————————————————————

 

ACN News: Friday, 11th May 2012 – UK

With pictures of Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi, Pakistan, and Bishop Joannes Zakaria of Luxor, Egypt (© Aid to the Church in Need www.acnuk.org)

Suffering of Christian women exposed

 

John Newton and John Pontifex

 

REVELATIONS about the scale of hate crimes against Christian women in Pakistan and Egypt are to be the subject of a meeting in parliament next week.

At the briefing in the House of Commons this coming Tuesday (15th May), MPs and Peers will hear how Christian women in countries marked by religious persecution experience kidnapping, violence, rape, and even have basics like water denied them.

Evidence of widespread discrimination against Christian women is highlighted in a number of new reports.

These include the Life on the Margins report by the Pakistani Catholic Church’s National Commission for Justice and Peace, and Catholic charity Aid to the Need (UK)’s new book, Christians and the Struggle for Religious Freedom, which will be launched at the event in parliament.

According to research, women are more likely to experience sexual harassment or rape because of their lower social status – which is due to both their religion and their gender.

One survey of women from minority religions in Pakistan revealed that 30 percent of those with jobs had experienced sexual harassment.

Other reports revealed how abductions of Coptic women in Egypt have increased, with 800 cases of Christians kidnapped and pressured to convert to Islam since 2009.

The Commons meeting will hear from Thomsena Anjum, originally from Pakistan’s Punjab province, who fled to the UK with her family after being shot at following a blasphemy allegation against her son.

Mrs Anjum, whose husband Stephen worked closely with assassinated Pakistan minorities minister Shahbaz Bhatti, will say: “I am a witness to the plight of Christian women in rural areas – but also deeply saddened because of the atrocities they faced on a daily basis due to their religion.

“These hate crimes towards Christian women are increasing and do not seem to end. These crimes are unreported and unpunished.”

Mrs Anjum visited hundreds of Christian families in Punjab province as a district councillor and social worker in Faisalabad between 1998 and 2009.

Chaired by Lord David Alton of Liverpool, the meeting will also hear testimonies from Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi, Pakistan, and Coptic Catholic Bishop Joannes Zakaria of Luxor, Egypt.

At the House of Commons meeting Aid to the Church in Need’s John Pontifex will outline the findings of research by the charity and other organisations.

He will say: “Taken as a whole, this research suggests that Christians in general are often treated at best as second class citizens and Christian women are treated as if they are barely citizens at all.”

ACN has compiled a briefing document specifically looking at the extent of persecution of Christian women in Egypt and Pakistan and highlighting the findings of key research into the subject.

Among those quoted in the briefing is Peter Jacob from Pakistan, one of the authors of the Life on the Margins report, who highlights the rape of Christian women.

He said “the number of attacks against women in Pakistan is four times higher than the cases that [are] reported” and many crimes “based on sex pass in silence”.

At the Commons meeting Mrs Anjum is set to describe other problems faced by Christian women – including how in many places they have been denied water after local Muslims claimed that wells would become ‘unclean’ if Christians touched them.

She said: “Christian women are the poorest of the poor in Pakistan and they are living with shame and suffering discrimination silently.”

 

  • Journalists and other interested parties are welcome to attend the meeting in the House of Commons on Tuesday 15th May. The meeting starts promptly at 5.30pm. Please arrive at St Stephen’s gate in plenty of time to allow for security and bring your invitation letter (sent out with this press release) with you.
  • Archbishop Joseph Coutts of Karachi and Archbishop Joannes Zakaria of Luxor, Egypt will also be Aid to the Church in Need’s guests at its Night of Witness event on Thursday 17th May.  For information about the event, visit www.acnuk.org/vigil

 

The Tyburn Lecture – May 9th 2012

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The Tyburn Lecture, May 9th 2012.

David Alton: “What Price Faith?”

The prophet Isaiah reminds us that you should never forget “the rock from which you are hewn.”

And in the Book of Deuteronomy we are told to “remember the days of old; consider the generations long ago; ask your father to recount it, and your elders to tell you the tale.”

Knowing who we are and knowing our personal and family story is one of the reasons why the New Testament contains a detailed genealogy through which Jesus traces all his forbearers.

Knowing who you are and cherishing your community’s and your family’s narrative is an essential part of everyone’s make–up. Knowing who you are gives self knowledge, security and confidence; the absence of this knowledge sows seeds of insecurity and instability.

The Oracle at Delphi offered the wise advice to the Lydian King Croesus, “Know thyself and you will know how to live.” The deep desire to know the rock from which we were hewn undoubtedly explains why television programmes such as “Who do you think you are?” and genealogy sites are so popular.

The importance of knowing your story – who you are – the rock from which you are hewn – is not a new urge or a need identified by modern psychiatry.

Central of the Jewish community’s celebration of Pesach, or Passover, is a 3,300 year-old ritual which involves a child questioning an adult about the Jewish story – the Haggadah. It is a story which Jews say begins with the bread of affliction and ends with the wine of freedom.

It is a loving act of remembering and through more than a hundred generations of Jews have handed on their story to their children.

The word Haggadah means “to relate, to tell, to expound.” But it also means “to bind, to join to connect”.

The old story binds one generation to the next; connecting past with future; and joining people of the present with their community throughout the world and throughout time; and above all, the telling of the story honours the presence of God in the affairs of mankind.

Being deprived of your story is a most serious deprivation.

Self evidently, there are many forms of material deprivation, and this is a tough time to be young and leaving school.

My generation used to agonise over the prospect of a nuclear war; this generation agonises over the lack of economic security, especially the lack of jobs.

But, in many respects, a far worse deprivation is the loss of identity experienced by so many young people today. I think of the 800,000 children who have no contact with their fathers. All too frequently there is no longer a father or an elder to tell the tale of their family or to explain their community’s history to the rising generation.

Consider also the effect on children who will deliberately be denied knowledge of their biological origins.

I strongly opposed the last Government’s decision to allow any two people to be listed as the parents of a child on the child’s official birth certificate. This was a classic example of how, instead of placing a child’s interests first, we treat them like accessories.

Biologically these men and women are not the child’s parents and the State has no business collaborating in a lie. Straightforwardly, this deceit is simply identity theft.

As if all of this were not bad enough, consider the gravest deprivation of all – the loss of religious identity and the loss of faith.

This, too, as I will argue tonight, is also a consequence of a combination of the breakdown of strong family and community life along with the deliberate actions of the State.

There is nowhere better to make the case for knowing the story of our faith – and recalling the price which has been paid for our right to practice and to share our faith and the things which we believe about the dignity of the human person made in God’s image– than Tyburn.

From the crucifixion of Christ Himself, to the stoning to death of Stephen; from the execution of Peter, Paul and the early disciples, to the deaths of maybe as many as 100,000 people at the hands of emperors such as Nero and Diocletian; to the executions of Penal times and the mass murders of the bloodied twentieth century – when more people lost their lives for their faith than in all the previous centuries combined – we have a precious narrative entrusted to us and which must be passed to those who follow.

This is sanctified, holy ground: As T.S.Eliot wrote of the murder of St.Thomas a Becket in Canterbury Cathedral:

“Wherever a saint has dwelt,
Wherever a Martyr has given his blood for Christ,
There is holy ground,
And the sanctity shall not depart from it.”

And, on this ground, just yards from where we are gathered, between 1535 until 1681, 105 Catholic men and women gave their lives for their faith – a sacrifice which paved the way for the religious freedoms and liberties which we enjoy today, and which, too often, we take for granted.

I do not believe in theocracy and would go to the scaffold myself for the principle that a man must be free not to believe in God. Paradoxically, the new ideology of angry atheism would, however, deny to believers the right to pray in a public place; to preach openly what they believe; or even the right to wear a necklace bearing a cross.

In Britain the principle challenge to Christianity is a combination of this Dawkins/Hitchens school of angry atheism and the more insidious threat of the sheer indifference of those who don’t know what it is they have rejected; who don’t know their story.

The late Christopher Hitchens, author of “God is not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything” claimed that religion is “the main source of hatred in the world”. Dawkins asserts that the crimes committed by Stalin and Hitler were not attributable to their atheism but because they were able to manipulate people’s religious sentiments.

Alexis de Tocqueville better understood human impulse and the nature of evil when he argued with passion that religion is central for the upholding of freedom itself. All who love liberty should “hasten to call religion to their aid, for they must know that the reign of freedom cannot be established without that of mores, not mores founded without beliefs.”

Be clear, when we fail to reappropriate and tell the story of those who gave their lives that we might be free to believe; when we fail to locate the Tyburn story in today’s continuing worldwide struggle for religious freedom, we create freedom without mores – and whether it is in the culture of the City of London or the new rampant materialism of China, freedom without mores has disastrous consequences.

Suppression of religious belief simultaneously dishonours memory and in robbing our children of their own story we rob them of their identity.

Sharmi Chakrabarti, the admirable Director of Liberty, put the same thought into the domestic context when she said that “The Christian’s right to wear a cross must be defended as fiercely as any other religious liberty….the struggle for religious freedom has been strongly connected with the struggle for democracy itself.”

And Amnesty International is right when it asserts that: right

“The right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion is a fundamental component of the universal and indivisible human rights framework that applies to all people everywhere, as laid out in international law.”

“Restrictions on religious freedoms, as well as other freedoms including social, cultural and linguistic freedoms, can often lead to other human rights violations such as the imprisonment of prisoners of conscience or even death”

We must be clear about that struggle and the interconnectedness of history with the present day, and the interconnectedness of the banning of a person’s right to wear a cross with the most vicious forms of discrimination and persecution. The Tyburn story is a story has great application in our own times.

The first recorded execution at Tyburn occurred in 1196 when William Fitz Osbern – a populist leader of London’s poor – was seized at the church of St Mary le Bow and was dragged naked behind a horse and hanged.

Four hundred years later the public execution of Catholics began. The first martyrs of the Protestant Reformation – St John Houghton and his four companions – were executed together at Tyburn on 4 May 1535. In June, John Fisher and in July, Thomas More, would be executed outside the Tower of London.

Two years later, the focus shifted back to Tyburn when, in 1537 Nicholas Tempest, one of the northern leaders of the Pilgrimage of Grace – the king’s own Bow bearer of the Forest of Bowland in Lancashire, close to where I live – was hanged on the orders of Henry VIII, whose death did not signal the end of Catholic persecution.

In 1571, during the reign of Henry’s daughter, Elizabeth I, the Tyburn Tree was erected – allowing three condemned people to be hanged at once.
Among them were the 105 Catholic men and women Tyburn martyrs. They included Edmund Campion (1581), Robert Southwell (1595), Anne Line (1601), John Southworth (1654); and the last of the martyrs, the Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland, Oliver Plunkett (1681).

Tyburn’s is a poignant and disturbing story of immense cruelty and barbarism; it is a story of a perverted legal system; and it reminds us to what intolerance, the crushing of conscience, and what Thomas More described as the breaking of “the unity of life” inexorably leads.

The story of Tyburn is not a story calling for revenge or to be used for the stoking of old hatreds but it is an instructive story which the elders fail to tell their children at their peril.

As Edmund Campion stood on the Tyburn scaffold, he famously prayed that the day would come when he and those who were sending him to his death would meet in heaven:

“I recommend your case, and mine, to Almighty God, the Searcher of hearts, to the end that we may at last be friends in heaven, when all injuries shall be forgotten.”

Our faith teaches us to forgive but until we meet in heaven we are not commanded to forget.

The Tyburn story must never be forgotten because the moment a nation slips into collective amnesia it risks repeating the old mistakes. Never again happens all over again.

Tyburn’s is an instructive and inspiring story which must be told because of the courage, heroism and virtue which it represents. It must be told because of the high price which was paid. We all know that when a faith is worth dying for, it is worth living for.

I am always struck by the effect which the gruesome spectacle of Tyburn and the bravery of the Catholic martyrs had on their compatriots.

Even as Campion was being racked and interrogated at the Tower, Philip Howard, 20th Earl of Arundel, was observing Campion’s ordeal and being strengthened in his own faith – and which would lead, in turn, to his death in the Tower.

As Campion stood on the scaffold facing his executioner his blood splattered onto the young Henry Walpole, a graduate of Peterhouse, Cambridge. Walpole was sufficiently inspired to give up his law practice, to become a Catholic, a Jesuit, and in 1595, like Campion, to be hanged drawn and quartered – in his case at York. What price faith?

In its wider historical context the Tyburn story calls to mind questions of justice: the continuing use today in many jurisdictions of the death penalty; the case for restorative justice; and temptation to incarcerate or execute opponents rather than address the reasons for their dissent.

And beyond the sacrifice, what are the links between the Tyburn tree and events around the world today?

In 2011 speaking in Westminster Hall, where More, Campion and others were tried, Pope Benedict XVI said that “the difficult dilemma which faced More in those difficult times was the perennial question of the relationship between what is owed to Caesar and what is owed to God.”

Benedict said that it had ultimately come down to a question of conscience for the man who asserted he was “the King’s good servant, but God’s first.”

Remaining faithful to conscience and faith are not theoretical issues if you live in one of the 16 countries listed last month by the United States Commission on International religious Freedom. In each of these countries people of different faiths – from Baha’is to Sufi Muslims – are being persecuted for their beliefs. Uniquely, the only group to be persecuted in each and every one of the 16 countries is Christians.

In the 16 countries of Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, North Sudan, Egypt, Eritrea, China, North Korea, Burma, Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Turkey and Vietnam some of the most egregious examples of violations of human rights and religious liberties occur. But they are no means alone. The Pugh Foundation says that 70% of the world’s 6.8 billion people face moderate to severe religious persecution. Religious freedom in many countries is a vanishing right and minority faith communities are disappearing with that right. Closer to home, two Scottish midwives were recently told by the courts that they had no right to refuse to take part in the ending of a life of an unborn child though abortion. What price faith? What price conscience?

Article 18 of the 1948 United Nations Declaration on Human Rights insisted that “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.”

Today, Article 18, the right to religious freedom, thought and conscience, is honoured in its breach rather than in its observance. And these violations occur with barely a passing murmur of protest or coverage in our media.

Within the last week 21 Christians were killed and 22 wounded in attacks during worship services at a church and university in Northern Nigeria. The north-south conflict is reminiscent of Sudan – when 2 million, mainly Christian people, were killed, Christian pastors have been beheaded by Boko Haram who openly say their interim goal is “to eradicate Christians from certain parts of the country.”

And now, in Sudan, a new genocidal campaign against Christians has been launched in the Nuba Mountains and South Kordofan by Khartoum’s Sharia regime.

The ancient churches in the Middle East have been under unprecedented and relentless escalating attack. I’m often struck by the story of the Palestinian Christian who would reply to the ill-informed question from westerners, “When did your family become Christians?” “About 2,000 years ago”. Pope Benedict has said: “Churches in the Middle East are threatened in their very existence”.

The European Union of Human Rights Organisations says that more than 100,000 Coptic Christians have left Egypt during nine months last year. This quotation is from its director:

“Copts are not emigrating voluntarily; they are coerced into that by threats and intimidation of hard-line Salafists, and the lack of protection they are getting from the Egyptian regime”

The hoped for changes anticipated in the Arab Spring have simply evaporated as liberal and democratic forces have largely been usurped by Salafists and others intent on imposing Sharia law – intolerant of non-adherents.

Think of the execution of Christians in Iran – murdered because they changed their faith. There are now hundreds of thousands of Iranians who have become Christians. Are they all to be sentenced to death?

In Pakistan, it is just over a year since Shahbaz Bhatti, the country’s courageous Catholic Minister for minorities was murdered. He is fast becoming the unofficial patron saint of religious liberty.

There are just 1.5 million Christians in Pakistan (3% of a population of 172 million). Bhatti had attempted to put into practices the principles of the founding father of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, who argued for religious toleration and respect. Bhatti said that his stand “would send a message of hope to the people living a life of disappointment, disillusionment and despair” adding that his life was “dedicated to the oppressed, the down trodden and the marginalized” and to “the struggle for human equality, social justice, religious freedom and the empowerment of religious minorities’ communities.”

Following Bhatti’s murder, Pope Benedict prayed that “I ask the Lord Jesus that the moving sacrifice of Shahaz Bhatti may arouse in people’s consciences the courage and commitment to defend religious freedom and human dignity.”

I genuinely am staggered at our indifference to the deaths of men like Shahbaz Bhatti and Iraq’s Archbishop Paulos Faraj Rahho, whose body was discovered in a shallow grave – one of an estimated 600 Iraqi Christians murdered as their churches have been bombed and desecrated. Hundreds of thousands have fled – many to Syria – where the horror is being played out all over again. Christian sources in Kirkuk say:
“The attacks on Christians continue and the world remains totally silent. It’s as if we had been swallowed up by the night”. Remember the admonition of Dr. Martin Luther King who said:
“In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends”.

When you think of modern martyrs dying for the faith, think, too, of China and North Korea – a country which I have visited four times and where no priest has been permitted in sixty years. In 1845, St Andrew Kim, the first Korean-born priest aged just 25 was arrested, stripped and decapitated – one of 8000 Korean martyrs. And the suffering continues as we speak.

The United Nations estimate that between 200,000 and 300,000 people are held in gulags and some of you will have seen the recently published harrowing account by Shin Dong Hyok of his “Escape from Camp 14.” Shin, who born in the camp saw his mother and brother executed and he was with me in London two weeks ago.

I have spoken in North Korea’s one permitted Catholic Church and seen the resilience of a community outlawed since 1953.

As if to underline the durability of faith when, 60 kilometers north of Pyongyang, I asked if there were any churches in the town of Anju I was told “no, they were destroyed in the war, but the believers meet in the rubble of the Catholic church every week.”

They had been doing that for the past sixty years without priests or sacraments. What price would you attach to faith in those circumstances?

In neighbouring China an estimated 250,000 Christians have been martyred since the Nestorians first introduced the Gospel in the seventh century.
Nine hundred years later Matteus Ricci and the Jesuits endured enormous hardship and risk in the service of the same Gospel.

From the earliest times Christians in the Far East have suffered grievously for their faith. In the twentieth century, between 1900 and 2000 more Christians were killed in China than in all the other countries of the world combined.

When I first visited China in 1981 I was taken to a piece of waste land in Shanghai and, as dusk came, at the barred window of a small apartment, the bishop Shanghai appeared and gave a blessing. Bishop Kung spent 30 years in prison or under house arrest. What price can you put on his faith and the endurance of the Catholic community in China?

As real evidence of the truth of Tertullian’s adage that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church”, it is a fact that, before this twenty first century is out, in terms of numbers, more Christians will be living in China than in any other nation.

In considering the plight of Christians in the Far East reflect for a moment on an ancient Chinese story about a man named Bian. He lived around 500 years before Christ.

One day Bian found a large stone. It was actually an unpolished piece of the precious and highly valued stone, jade. Bian was so excited by his discovery that he resolved to present the unpolished stone as a gift to the Emperor of China.

Unfortunately for Bian, when he received it the Emperor saw nothing except a large stone with its rough and disfigured surfaces.

Believing that Bian as trying to make a fool of him the Emperor angrily ordered Bian’s left foot to be amputated.

The Emperor died and Bian tried again – presenting the large stone to the new Emperor. Once again, the potentate reacted angrily, and seeing only the exterior of the unpolished stone, he ordered that Bian’s right foot should also be amputated.

Now a third emperor ascended the throne. The cruelly mutilated Bian asked to be brought to the Palace. For three days and nights he lay outside, clenching the jade in his arms.

This new emperor, exasperated but also intrigued, sent one of his courtiers to investigate and then ordered that the stone be polished to see what it concealed. This was when they discovered a stunning and beautiful jade hidden beneath the rough and ugly exterior.

It has been suggested that the badly used Bian and his jade is not unlike the grievously misused and persecuted Christian communities of the Far East.

After much suffering and the disfigurement of these believers, the beauty of what is concealed is being revealed and at last being valued even in previous atheistic dictatorships. China, especially, with its rampant unfettered materialism replacing the ravages of Maosim desperately needs the Christian church and the hidden beauty represented by Bian and his jade.

The sacrifices which Catholic missionaries made to plant the seeds of faith in these remote and far away places – just like the sacrifices made here at Tyburn – is a direct response to Jesus’ great commission – it gives meaning to the Catholic Church’s central claim – to be universal. And it has always accepted that suffering and martyrdom may be the price which has to be paid. Campion was right when he said that the price had been reckoned and that if the enterprise was of God – Auctore Deo – it would not fail:

“The expense is reckoned,
the enterprise is begun; it is of God, it cannot be withstood.
So the Faith was planted: so it must be restored.”

When I think of the reckoned price of Tyburn and God’s enterprise in our world today, I think of some of the men and women I have met since I helped establish the Jubilee Campaign for religious liberty in the 1980s.

I think of the bishop I met in the Ukraine – Pavlo Vasylk – and Ivan Gel, the lay Chairman of the Committee for the defence of the Greek Catholic Church. Between them they had served nearly 40 years of prison sentences.
The Bishop’s chaplain had been sent to Chernobyl to clear radioactive waste, without any protective clothing – as a punishment for celebrating the liturgies in the open.

I think of the elderly villager in Nepal who had walked for two weeks to give me his first hand account of how he had been brutally beaten after refusing to renounce his faith; the nun who had been put in the stocks; or the Indian nun in Orissa who was raped in an orgy of violence.

I think of some of the other people and places which I have visited:

the bishop in Sudan who showed me what had been his home, church, school and clinic – all obliterated by Sudanese bombers; the great Romanian bishop, Cardinal Todea, who had languished for years in Communist prisons; the Orthodox dissident, Alexander Ogorodnikov, who was kept in solitary confinement in a Soviet jail because he had a organised Christian renewal movement; Lech Walesa and his Polish Solidarity workers, the inspiration of the Cardinal Archbishop of Krakow, the future Pope John Paul II; the Assyrian and Chaldean Catholics hanging on by their fingertips in South East Turkey; and the dignity of the Karen Christian tribes people in Burma; and many others enduring their own versions of Tyburn in this inhospitable world for Christians.

The answer to the question “what price faith?” – the subject of tonight’s lecture – s to be found in these people and in these places. So much of what we take for granted or contemptuously reject they treasure and preserve in their hearts. These are today’s Tyburn martyrs. We must treasure and pass on our own story but never neglect to apply it in our own times too.

In March, and appropriately enough, speaking in Cuba’s Revolution Square Pope Benedict reminded us of two things:

First that religious freedom solidifies society :

Strengthening religious freedom consolidates social bonds, nourishes the hope of a better world, creates favourable conditions for peace and harmonious development, while at the same time establishing solid foundations for securing the rights of future generations.

And secondly that:

Anyone who acts irrationally cannot become a disciple of Jesus.
Faith and reason are necessary and complementary in the pursuit of truth. God created man with an innate vocation to the truth and he gave him reason for this purpose. Certainly, it is not irrationality but rather the yearning for truth which the Christian faith promotes.

On the Western wall of Westminster Abbey there are some statues of modern martyrs. First among them is the Franciscan Polish priest, St.Maximilian Kolbe

In February 1941, when the Nazis promised him that they would permit him to continue his work so long as he made no social comment and did not speak out against them, and so long as he restricted himself to religiosity and pietism, they would leave him alone. He responded by stating in words which sent him to Auschwitz:

No one on the world can change truth.

He insisted that when we had found truth we had to serve it because

of what use will be the victories on the battlefield if we are defeated in our innermost personal selves?
Kolbe chose the defining battle ground. It is a battle between a religious faith which pits good against evil and truth against lies. And the defence of truth implies sacrifice; it will always require a price to be paid.

Let me end:

Our task must be to assert the importance in all places of rooting religious freedom in the dignity of the human person. The claim for religious freedom is a universal one, securing the freedom of all people of conscience-Christian or not-to embrace the religious belief of their choice.

In turn, the elevation of religious freedom brings great bounty to society in the working out of charitable endeavour and the deepening of the common good. Perhaps-in the context of the challenges to which I have referred-this Governments should be seized by this other important reason for promoting freedom of religious belief.

In 1965, the Second Vatican Council, in its great declaration on religious liberty, Dignitatis Humanae forcefully set out the case for religious freedom. It includes this telling admonition to lawful authorities:

“A society which promotes religious freedom will be enlivened and enriched; one that doesn’t will decay”.

As Edmund Campion journeyed from Rome’s Venerable English College he knew what fate awaited him but he loved his country and knew that without its historic faith it would decay.

He came to tell them their nation’s story. And in our own times, and in different ways, the elders must tell the children their story.

More than that, we who have voices must be prepared to use them and our freedoms to speak for those who have none – and who face the ordeal of Tyburn each day of their lives: “In the end” as Dr.King said “we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”

Ends.

David Alton (born 1951) was a Liberal and then Liberal Democrat MP for constituencies in Liverpool 1979-1997 and was for a while Chief Whip of his party in the House of Commons. In 1997 he became a member of the House of Lords as Baron Alton of Liverpool, where he has sat as an Independent, having left the Liberal Democratic Party because it replaced the right to conscience on the issue of abortion with party policy. In the early 1990s he helped to found the Movement for Christian Democracy. Alton is especially known for his pro-life stance and in the Commons introduced a private member’s bill to stop late abortions. He was also foremost in opposing the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act of 2008 and has been active in campaigning against the legalisation of euthanasia. Earlier this year he successfully led a parliamentary campaign to assist victims of mesothelioma. Alton has always devoted attention to international questions (in 1987 he co-founded the lobby group for human rights, Jubilee Campaign) and in recent years has focused, for example, on the persecution of Christians and human rights abuse in such countries as North Korea (he is chairman of the British North Korea All-Party Parliamentary Group), South Sudan and Egypt. Appointed Professor of Citizenship at Liverpool John Moores University in 1997, where he founded the Foundation for Citizenship and chairs the Roscoe Lectures, Alton is also an academic and author, and has written on political issues and aspects of faith. Amongst his publications we may list Citizen Virtues (1999), an exposition of his views on citizenship in contemporary society; Pilgrim Ways (2001), a description of his personal visits to Christian pilgrimage sites; Euthanasia: Getting to the Heart of The Matter (with M. Foley, 2005); and Abortion: Getting to the Heart of the Matter (with M. Foley, 2005). An active speaker and lecturer in Great Britain and abroad, he is a Knight Commander of the Order of St.Gregory. Full biography at:

www.davidalton.net

Links: Text: Lord Alton gives Tyburn Lecture on ‘What price faith?’ http://www.catholicnews.com/”>Text: Lord Alton gives Tyburn Lecture on ‘What price faith?’
http://www.catholicnews.com/

Chen Guangchen – the courageous blind man who sees with clear sight that which the world has failed to see

Posted by David Alton on

Chen Guangcheng is the blind self-taught human rights lawyer who has opened the eyes of the world to China’s one child policy. Chen has courageously exposed egregious violations of human rights which for decades world leaders have chosen not to see and which western governments have aided and abetted.

That Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been drawn into the dramatic events surrounding Chen over the past fortnight – his escape from house arrest, his temporary sanctuary in the American embassy in Beijing, his subsequent transfer to a Chinese hospital, and accusations that he has been betrayed as Hilary Clinton left beijing without him  -  only underlines Chen’s extraordinary story.

As these events were unfolding Secretary Clinton was due to arrive in Beijing and she must have been reflecting on the remarks she had made in the same city, in 1995, at the fourth Women’s Conference that “women’s rights are human rights” – a conference of political elites, notoriously marked by the absence of a single Chinese woman who had suffered under the one-child policy; a policy not even alluded to during its deliberations.

Be clear, the one child policy makes it a criminal offence to be pregnant; it is a policy which makes it illegal to have a brother or a sister.

It is a policy which has led to an estimated 400 million babies being aborted or killed through infanticide; a gendercide policy which favours the birth of male children so that one out of every six girls is aborted or abandoned – leading to some 40 million “missing” women.

It is a policy which has skewed China’s population balance. The Economist reported that in one province, Guangdong, there were 119 male babies for every 100 girls. Ten years earlier, the ratio was a shocking 130.”

The policy has also distorted the balance between young, middle-aged and elderly people with catastrophic social repercussions. Sex trafficking and crime has proliferated; women have become commodities; trafficking leads to the sale of girls as child brides. Little wonder, then that according to World Health Organisation statistics, China is the only country in the world where more women commit suicide than men.

500 women take their own lives every single day .

What was the Clinton slogan? – “women’s rights are human rights.”

Despite knowing about the nature of these policies one of President Obama’s first acts on coming to office was to reverse the 2001 decision to withhold US funding from the United Nations Population Association (UNFPA) and to immediately pledge $50 million. For decades, and without a break, Britain has been doing the same, with the support of all three political parties – unctuously saying it doesn’t support coercion while it has poured millions of pounds into the UNFPA and International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

I have campaigned against this policy since the 1980s – and both in the Commons and the Lords have initiated debates; tabled questions; moved an amendment calling for the ending of such financial support; and seen Ministers and Secretaries of State – in one case being sworn at by a Cabinet Minister for my trouble.

The meeting turned sour after I pointed out that the Chinese Population Association (CPA) is a full member of IPPF and that like UNFPA who had channelled funds into the CPA which would have been better used for development and the relief of poverty.

In 1994, in a Commons debate I said: “I am utterly mystified as to how anyone could watch Channel Four’s, “The Dying Rooms”, or last year’s BBC programme, “Women of the Yellow Earth”, and still offer a defence of the payment of £100 million of blood money over the past decade.”

“The Dying Rooms” followed BBC2’s “Women of the Yellow Earth”. Both highlighted how forced abortion, forced sterilisation and the forcible fitting of IUCDs for women had been commonplace in China since the one-child policy was introduced in 1980.

Brian Woods, the director of “The Dying Rooms” wrote about his harrowing visit to a number of orphanages in China at that time. He said:

“Every single baby in this orphanage was a girl … the only boys were mentally or physically disabled. 95 per cent of the babies we saw were able-bodied girls”.

He also said:

 “The most shocking orphanage we visited lay, ironically, just twenty minutes from one of the five star international hotels that herald China’s emergence from economic isolation”.

Successive British Governments repeatedly say they do not support coercion while the CPA  officials say their declared aim is to “implement government population policies”. Quin Zinzhong, a Minister who oversaw that policy, said:

“The size of the family is far too important to be left to the couple. Births are a matter of state planning”.

In one province the slogan,“It is better to have more graves than one more child”,has been used.

In Parliament I cited Mrs.Gao Xiao Duan, one of the officials who ran a centre for forced abortions. She wept as she recalled when “a baby of nine months gestation” – born above the permitted quota “had poison injected into its skull and the child died and was thrown into a trash can.”

I cited Amnesty International’s  report of a baby born, above the permitted quotas, drowned at birth in Hebei Province and The Sunday Times report of a man tortured to death in Hunan after refusing to reveal the whereabouts of his pregnant wife. Jin Yani was nine months pregnant when five officials pinned her to her bed and injected her with saline solution. The loss of blood nearly killed her – and, terrified, she went into hiding.

Harry Wu, the human rights activist who was imprisoned in China for many years, described the realities on the ground:

“In Communist China, grassroots PBP cadres”–that is, planned birth policy cadres–“are stationed in every village. Those communist party and government cadres are the most immediate tools for dominating the people … They must watch every woman in the village, their duty being to promptly force women violators to undergo sterilization and abortion surgeries … PBP is targeted against every woman, every family”.

And what have the international agencies had to say? The former executive director of the UNFPA, Nafis Sadiq, remarked:

“China has every reason to feel proud and pleased with its remarkable achievements in family planning policy . . . Now China could offer its experiences and special experts to other countries

It was against this background that I was, therefore, deeply moved in 2005  to read the story of Chen Guangchen, who had been arrested after attempting to file a class action suit on behalf of women in China’s Shandong province.

I have campaigned for Chen ever since he was arrested in 2005, regularly raising his case in Parliament and with Ministers.

Two years ago, while Chen was still in prison, I met with Chen’s lawyers in Beijing and spoke to his wife by telephone. In 2009 at the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Beijing, I met with China’s Special Representative on Human Rights, Dr Shen Yongxiang and among issues I raised was the case of Chen Guang Chen, whom I told him would one day be regarded as a national hero.

The chronology of events leading to Chen’s incarceration began in March 2005 when he learned from villagers that officials in Linyi, a city in Shandong province, had subjected thousands of people trying to evade restrictive population control laws to late-term forced abortions, midnight raids, beatings and compulsory sterilization.

Chen, a self taught or “barefoot lawyer”, then began his own investigation into the allegations.

In June 2005, he filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of 130,000 women who suffered forced abortions and sterilizations lawsuit in Shandong, and  travelled to Beijing to discuss the case with legal scholars, lawyers and foreign journalists. Soon after, the lawsuit was rejected.

Then, in August 2005, local officials imprisoned Chen and his immediate family in their home and shut off all outside communication. In September Chen escaped but was apprehended in Beijing and returned to Linyi. When he tried again to escape in October, local authorities failed to protect him against beatings by civilians apparently working in connection with the police to help enforce his isolation.

On June 21, the Yinan County People’s Procuratorate approved Chen’s arrest.

That same day, Chen’s lawyers, Li Jinsong and Zhang Lihui, were able to visit him, but from then on, authorities escalated the pressure to deny access to defence witnesses and materials for all the lawyers and activists involved. Next, police officers took lawyer Li in for questioning. Unknown assailants beat three other lawyers defending villagers jailed for supporting Chen – one of whom I have met. He said he had been left for dead. Police officers first looked on as the cameras of the villagers’ lawyers were smashed, then took them in for questioning.

When Li Jinsong and Li Subin, another member of Chen’s legal team, tried to visit Chen’s wife on June 23, they were stopped and beaten by guards. The following day, all the lawyers involved returned to Beijing. Li Jinsong and Li Subin tried returning to Shandong on June 27, only to be harassed again while the police again stood by. Some 20 men overturned the lawyers’ car and police took Li Jinsong in for questioning once again.

Chen was brought before a Star Chamber and imprisoned four years on the trumped up charge  of obstructing traffic and damaging a police vehicle.

Of the charade of a legal process Sophie Richardson, deputy director of the Asia division of Human Rights Watch said:

“When Chen tried to make proper use of China’s legal system, the response wasn’t due process. It was house arrest, physical abuse, and then ‘disappearance’ by local authorities. His case is a textbook example of how little the rule of law really means in China.”

I asked Dr.Shen whether China’s Government truly believed that a blind man could have inflicted such damage on the combined might of the Republic of China’s law enforcement agencies: damage such as to warrant four years in prison.

 Damage? No.  Danger? yes.

Time magazine understood the effect of Chen’s bravery when, in 2006, they named him as one of 100 most influential men in the world.

In prison, Chen was  tortured and denied medical treatment. When I met his lawyers in Beijing they told me that he had been put in a cell with eighteen other prisoners. Those inmates were told not to converse or make contact with Chen.

Chen was also denied medical treatment and for many months his wife was prevented from visiting him. If he had been willing to withdraw his complaints and repent, Chen could have secured early release, but this extraordinary principled and courageous man refused to be cowed or to recant.

After his release in 2010 he was kept under house arrest, along with his wife and six-year-old daughter. Guards constantly harassed them. A strictly enforced decision was made by the Shandong authorities to put his home out of bounds to visitors. No one was then permitted to speak to Chen or visit him. He and his wife were been confined to their quarters and only his seventy six year-old mother-in-law has been allowed to enter and leave, bringing occasional provisions.

That all changed when a video was smuggled out of his home. In the recording – which was secreted beyond China thanks to a Chinese official who is outraged by Chen’s treatment and was made available on You Tube, and seen by millions – Chen detailed his degrading treatment and appalling denial of his basic human rights. At the end of the You Tube video Chen says “We the sons and daughters of our great nation should have the courage to defeat our own fears.”

Referring to his transfer from the Shandong jail to his home he said:

“I was in a small prison and now I am in a larger prison.”

Twenty two agents constantly monitored him and devices were installed in adjacent properties to jam his mobile phone signal. Their home was under constant surveillance – by 66 security officials.

A local source told news agencies that “They cannot move from bed, and they have not been allowed to go to hospital.”

Chen’s house arrest finally came to an end last month when He Peirong, better known by her screen name Pearl, assisted Chen’s escape.

In what seemed like a scene from The Shawshank Redemption, Chen literally climbed over a wall, took to his heels and despite falling into a river and taking numerous wrong turns navigated himself to where He Peirong was waiting for him – and she drove him for eight hours to Beijing. She has since been arrested. Shawshank has been placed on the list of words censored from internet searches. And have a though for Chen’s wife and family. His wife, Mrs Yuan, once remarked: “I tell you, the darkness of the society is way beyond your imagination.”

China is a huge country and it would be wrong to assume that the Chinese President, Hu Jintao, or senior officials approve of the barbarism of regional Communist Party officials. But, equally, their failure to take action against those responsible and ignore the issues raised by Chen Guangchen they will inevitably damage China’s reputation.

Chinese people are some of the most cultivated people in the world, and there is much about today’s China which fills me with deep admiration, but the treatment of Chen and his wife and the behaviour of its provincial officials underlines the continuing challenge of matching extraordinary economic progress with the enhancement and protection of human rights.

Chen’s case is uncomfortable for China and the West – especially for Hillary Clinton and Brack Obama in the run up to an election. But it is a time of change for China as well. The US election will coincide with China’s 8th Communist Party Congress when Vice President Xi Jinping will succeed Hu Jintao.

Even if a formula is now found  to allow him to travel abroad with his family – perhaps to study – and which would at least show welcome compassion – this remarkable Shawshank has caught the public imagination and blown open a policy of coercion and eugenics. It also exposes the shameful collaborative role played by America and Britain in aiding and abetting the heinous violations of human rights which Chen has set himself against. And it has taken a blind man to see that to which we have shamefully closed our eyes.

See Ann Farmer’s blog:

http://my.telegraph.co.uk/chestertoniann/chestertoniann/125/china-the-problem-of-human-rights/